


Travelogue

by neveralarch



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Polyamory, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-10 08:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-New York, Clint's still having trouble dealing with the whole Loki-controlling-his-brain situation, and Natasha seems to be avoiding him. Bruce Banner, meanwhile, just wants to get back to Kolkata.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes, this chapter: largely off-screen violence  
> also, I will admit that my Clint is pretty heavily influenced by 80s comics - possibly I should apologize for that.

Clint's running a deep cover operation in Sevastopol when he sees Bruce Banner again. Banner's working on the docks, carrying a stack of boxes, and Clint skids past him with fifteen armed and dangerous drug dealers in pursuit. Banner looks busy, and Clint is definitely busy, so he doesn't stop to say hello. Clint does a dive off a pier instead, and maybe the drug dealers think they managed to shoot him or maybe they heard about their warehouse burning down (finally, Clint set it on fire about an hour ago), because they head out again after ten minutes of Clint shivering under the planking of the pier. March is not warm enough to be doing this. Also, his guns are probably getting wet, and they're definitely dragging him down. Clint shifts his grip on the underside of the pier, and contemplates how long he's going to have to spend disassembling his pistols.

Banner sticks his head over the planks.

"Hey," says Clint. "How's it going?"

Banner shrugs, upside-down. "Do you want a hand?" he asks.

"It might take two," says Clint, but they get him hauled back out of the water pretty quickly - Banner's a sturdy guy, even when he's not rocking the angry, super-strong alter-ego. Banner gets a little wet in the process of extricating Clint from the water, but Clint is soaking, dripping, and his Kevlar under-vest is _ruined_ , so he's not feeling sympathetic. Especially when Banner looks him up and down, Clint doing his best drowned-rat impersonation, and Banner with that little smile that is either reassuring or mocking, Clint never could decide.

"You seemed like you were in a hurry," says Banner. "Do I want to know?"

"SHIELD stuff," says Clint, and hesitates. Banner's looking at him with sleepy curiosity, but Clint didn't get where he is now by volunteering information to anyone.

But 'where he is now' is tired and wet in Ukraine, and anyway, Banner's some kind of SHIELD operative now. So Clint elaborates, just a little. "Picking on one gang to impress another." Clint nods in the direction that he and the gunmen came from. "I didn't mean for it to get quite so personal, though."

Bruce nods, like it could happen to anyone. "Need somewhere to dry off?"

"You," says Clint, fervently, "are my best friend."

Banner's expression doesn't change, but his shoulders hunch a little into 'wary.' Guy's not good at taking a compliment or enthusiasm, but it's not Clint's fault that he is _extremely_ enthusiastic about getting dry. Banner leads the way to some apartment building a few minutes walk off the docks. There's an older man sitting on the stoop, and he nods at Bruce, saying something in a language that's not quite Russian. All Clint catches a word that sounds like 'wet.' That's pretty accurate, anyway.

Banner answers the man, waving to Clint and then the dock. The man laughs, says something else, and Clint waves.

"What did he say?" asks Clint.

"You don't speak Ukrainian?" asks Banner. He leads the way past the stoop and down a narrow flight of stairs.

"Nah," says Clint. "But most everybody in Sevastopol speaks Russian anyway."

"Depends where you are, I guess," says Banner. He didn't answer Clint's question, but Clint decides to let it pass. Whatever the man said probably wasn't very complimentary, and Clint doesn't need to hear more about how he shouldn't have taken a dip in the Black Sea.

Banner is living in a basement apartment, a bit dank and really dark, but he's got towels, which is what matters.

"I can lend you some clothes, if you want to change," says Banner, as Clint towels off his hair.

Banner's rummaging in a cardboard box that seems to be subbing in for a proper chest of drawers. He's about Clint's height, even if Banner's doing his best to hide it by slouching, so borrowing something from him should work without an embarrassing belly-shirt or giant baggy pants situation.

"Yeah, awesome," says Clint. Sooner he's dry and back on the job the better. Kuznetsov is going to worry if he's missing for too long, and if Kuznetsov worries then he won't give Clint the passports, and Clint's too tired to set another warehouse on fire. He put his guns to one side and strips off his wet clothes as he thinks, wrapping the towel around his waist to preserve Banner's modesty.

"How did you find me?" asks Banner. It takes Clint a few seconds to focus on the question, away from the mission.

"Didn't," says Clint. "Weird coincidence, huh?"

Banner's mouth twists. "I don't know if I believe that."

Clint holds up his hands in surrender, or pacification. The towel around his hips loosens, but that's not Clint's concern right now. Banner says he's got his life and the Hulk under control, told Natasha that often enough, but Clint's not going to stake his life on that when his bow and tranquillizer arrows are at a safehouse and his pistols are seeping water. No sense letting Banner work himself up with paranoia.

Not paranoia if they really are after you, Clint reminds himself. Well-deserved suspicion, then.

"I didn't know you were here," he says. "I thought you were in New York, with Stark."

Banner's working his hands, _wringing_ them, Clint had never been sure what wringing meant before he watched Banner do it, and he looks like he's going to question Clint's innocence again.

The towel makes its bid for escape, and Clint keeps his hands and eyes up as it slides to the floor. Banner's gaze flickers after it, and then back up to Clint's face. Clint doesn't stop himself from smirking a bit, because he doesn't have anything to be ashamed of in the no-pants department, and then Banner's smiling again and picking something out of the box.

"I was in New York." Banner tosses a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt at Clint's head, and Clint catches them. "Now I'm here." 

Clint steps into the pants, tightens the strings, then shrugs on his shoulder holsters with the wet pistols. "Trouble in science paradise?"

Banner turns to look at him, but Clint is pulling the shirt over his head so he can't see the face Banner's making, just his dim outline against the light of the one working lamp in the basement.

"The city starts to get to you after a while," says Banner. "I needed a break."

"So you're taking it in Ukraine," says Clint. He tugs the collar of his shirt a little, settling it. It has the logo and number for some NYC pizza place on it, but they probably don't do delivery this far out.

"I'm working my way back to India," explains Banner. "Which takes time, if you're avoiding planes. Doesn't SHIELD know all of this already?"

"I must have missed the memo," says Clint. Somebody in SHIELD probably does know all of this. Clint operates on a strictly need-to-know basis, like all field operatives who might get inconveniently captured. He'll need to report this meeting, anyway, but he'll do it in debriefing and not before. If SHIELD really has lost Banner, then it's their problem. "Listen, I would love to stay and chat, but I got to get back to my mission before my contact flips out on me."

"Sure," says Banner. "Keep the clothes, okay?"

"I'll bring them back," says Clint. "Listen, I'll be done with this whole mess tomorrow. Do you want to meet up, have lunch, chat about, uh, Avengers stuff? We can trade clothes then." He looks down at the sopping pile of his old clothes. "I mean, if you're okay with me leaving these here."

"I'll hang them up," says Banner, and Clint heads out, not exactly stylish but feeling a lot better for having dry clothes.

Kuznetsov does flip out, and in the end Clint has to shoot his hand to a table to keep him from running (good thing he retrieved his bow - bullets do not work as well as arrows when it comes to pinning someone in place). But it all works out and Clint doesn't have to burn down any more warehouses, so everyone's happy, except for Kuznetsov, but forget him, guy whined a lot for a tiny hole in his hand.

Banner is gone when Clint stops by his apartment for lunch. The door is unlocked, and the place is totally cleaned out. Clint didn't really expect anything else. Banner's been on the run for years, now, and obviously he's gotten pretty good at it. Clint doesn't think it's necessary - he was going to take Banner to a sushi restaurant, not to an ambush - but it's Banner's life.

On his way back out to the docks, the older man from yesterday spots him and waves. Clint waves back, and the man says something in Ukrainian. Clint smiles, because that's usually a good strategy (except for that one time in Mandeville, but it wasn't Clint's fault that the woman's dog had died, and he learned French after that).

Ukrainian and Russian are supposed to be mutually intelligible, but Clint can't figure out the accent. The man repeats himself, slower for the dumb American. Something about clothes. Clint keeps smiling. It's pretty unlikely that any clothes have died.

Eventually the man gives up and runs into his own apartment to retrieve what turns out to be Clint's clothes from yesterday. They're still a bit damp, but Clint appreciates the thought. Even the Kevlar is in there - Clint should have told Bruce that he could've just thrown it out.

"Большое спасибо," he says to the man, because maybe thank you is the same in Ukranian. The man smiles, possibly operating on the same principle as Clint, and produces a slip of paper.

_Sorry I had to run - got an opportunity to move on, and I thought you'd understand. Say hi to Fury for me.  
Bruce_

Clint nods at the older man and decides to go to lunch on his own. He tosses the note into the harbor as he goes, trusting the water to get rid of it.

Two days later, back on the Helicarrier, Director Fury doesn't look surprised at all when Clint tells him that Doctor Banner says hi. Agent Hill does, though.

"We're keeping our distance," she says, later, at debrief. "You shouldn't have initiated contact."

"I didn't." Clint spreads his hands, felling like all he does these days is deny other people's suspicions. Life of a superspy. "He's the one who fished me out of the water."

"We don't want Doctor Banner to think SHIELD is after him," insists Hill. "Which, according to your report, is now _exactly_ what he thinks."

"Give it a couple weeks and he'll realize it was totally random," says Clint. 

"Just make sure it doesn't happen again," says Hill. "Banner's too important to scare off."

Clint flips her a half-assed salute, and they get back to the actual debriefing.

Sometimes Clint misses Phil Coulson, misses him a lot, actually. Phil would have never let him get away with that. Phil would have pushed him for some kind of promise on the Banner situation, and Clint would have given it, however reluctantly. Clint and Hill don't have that kind of rapport yet. She's much more of a 'wait and see' kind of person, and so is Clint, so they watch each other from their positions of mutual respect and the distance between them remains.

Clint can't decide if Phil is actually dead. Fury's pulled some nasty tricks before, but they've lost agents before too, and good ones. Clint wonders if Agent Hill could look him in the eye and debrief him if Phil was actually dead, if Clint had caused his death by attacking the Helicarrier under Loki's orders.

"When will Kuznetsov regain the use of his hand?" asks Agent Hill, paging through Clint's report. Clint pushes his questions to the back of his mind, where they won't bother him.

"Couple months?" suggests Clint. "Depends on how good a doctor he has. But I didn't shoot his forging hand."

Agent Hill smiles, just a tiny thing, but if she can smile then Clint can grin, and everything is okay.

\---

Natasha's not in her room when Clint's finally released from debriefing, pending a new assignment. Clint lets himself in with the key code Nat keeps for him, and there's a note taped to the underside of her bed frame. It takes fifteen minutes of decoding to get two lines in Russian:

_In Yangon, simple interrogation. Back within the week._

Clint appreciates the notice, even if SHIELD would pitch a fit if it knew that two of its top-secret operatives were feeding each other information out of turn. But he hasn't seen Tasha in about a month, and hell if he doesn't miss her. And before that was the Loki thing, which Clint doesn't like to think about and which they still haven't really healed from.

If Clint's honest with himself, he wouldn't be surprised if Nat was managing her mission schedule to keep them apart. Nat has trust issues a mile wide, and Clint has just proved himself to be untrustworthy (given some very extenuating circumstances, but still). He wouldn't want to be around himself either, if it wasn't kind of unavoidable.

There's another note on his pillow when Clint gets back to his bedroom. This one isn't coded and it's in English, so Tasha thought it would be fine if someone saw it. It's not in her normal handwriting, but she's the only one with the code to Clint's room.

_Don't mope, I didn't do this on purpose. It's ok to text._

So maybe Natasha knows him a bit too well. Clint puts both of the notes in the shredder and goes to brush his teeth, the whole routine. He snags his phone before he turns off the light, though.

**CB: Everything going ok?**

The reply takes a few minutes, while Clint thinks about getting a magazine or something, because he's not going to be able to sleep until he hears back from her.

His phone buzzes on top of his stomach.

**NR: yes**

So that's good. Clint breathes in, out, he gets too worked up about missing Tasha right now, still on edge from his Loki-induced not-quite-out-of-body experience.

It's possible that he skimped on the medical leave, but he hates being idle and he really hates therapy. Mandatory grief counseling - for a man he doesn't believe is dead and for strangers he doesn't remember killing - seems a bit useless.

Nat doesn't ask how he is, because it's obvious that he's on the Helicarrier, since he got her notes. He's in SHIELD's hands and he survived the mission, and that's all they can expect. Nat doesn't ask questions that she knows the answers to. Clint thinks of all the pointless things he could text her, and decides to give her gossip.

**CB: Guess who I saw in Sevastopol?**

**NR: ?**

**CB: The big guy.**

**NR: whts he dng thr?**

Natasha texts with one hand, usually while doing something else. Clint's always surprised when he gets a half-way readable sentence out of her.

**CB: Working his way to India, he says.**

No response, after five minutes. But that's fine. Clint puts his phone on the charger and flicks the light off, and he's asleep before he has time to worry about tomorrow.

\---

Agent Hill pulls Clint out into the field with her before Natasha gets back. It's just a surveillance job for some item transfers between the CIA and SHIELD, so Clint leaves a note in Nat's room that says it's okay to call or text, if something comes up. He's not expecting to actually hear from her much, because Tasha doesn't do small talk and she usually waits to tell him about problems until she can do it face-to-face. On the fourth day of talking to CIA guys and being bored and playing goldfish with Agent Hill, Natasha texts him to say that she's headed to Istanbul to make a pick-up. Clint says to have fun, and Hill tells him it's his turn. On the sixth day, Natasha's name shows up on Clint's caller ID.

Well, 'Vivien' shows up on the caller ID, because Clint wouldn't put Natasha's name or any of her aliases into his contact book, but that's not the point.

"Banner's in Turkey," says Natasha, when Clint picks up.

"Huh," says Clint. "That's not much closer to India."

Nat murmurs something away from the receiver, and Clint can hear someone else talking, a male voice, laughter.

"He says he keeps getting distracted," says Natasha.

"Wait, is he there now? Is that why you requested to go to Istanbul?"

"Happy accident," says Natasha, firmly, and hangs up.

Clint guesses that her 'happy accident' is a bit more planned than his 'weird coincidence.' He wonders if Banner is buying it this time.

Clint doesn't call Nat back, because she wouldn't pick up, and he doesn't text her 'it's not fair that he gets to see you before I do,' because that would be needy. He doesn't say anything about Hill's no-contact policy, because it's a little late for that. But he has to do something.

**CB: Tell him I say hi**

He doesn't hear from Tasha for a few hours after that, and then the tech exchange is attacked by a bunch of thugs and a guy covered in yellow-green slime, so Clint gets kind of distracted. Or kind of engulfed in slime. It's the same thing. The sight of Maria Hill covered in slime and firing an assault rifle is certainly distracting, which is why it takes Clint a few more seconds to beat up the slime guy than it should have. (Not an excuse he plans to use, ever. He mutters something about having trouble gripping his bow when his hands were so slippery. Hill gives him a knowing look, but she can't prove anything.)

Eight hours and about three showers later, Clint remembers that he never heard back from Tasha. This may be because his phone is now cracked and oozing, like most everything Clint had on him when 'the Sticker' (what an awful supervillain name) and his goons attacked. Good thing he didn't bring his best bow on that mission. Clint stares at the useless phone, and hopes Tasha didn't need him for anything.

Not that he would be much help, out here, still a bit slimy despite his attempts at hygiene.

Clint has a burner phone with his spare clothes, so he gets dressed and types in Nat's number from memory.

**CB: Phone got slimed, sorry. Anything happen with Banner?**

No response. Clint has dinner with Agent Hill (whose hair is still a little yellowed from the slime, but he's a gentleman so he hides his snickering behind a hand), then chats with some shell-shocked CIA guys, gets in the plane to return to SHIELD HQ, and tries Natasha again.

**CB: Hey, seriously. Everything ok? Istanbul still standing?**

**NR: stp woryng  
bruce is v sweet and nt at all green**

**CB: Didn't say I was worried about Banner destroying anything. You're a force of nature, Tasha.**

Clint can imagine Tasha making a face at her phone, subtly, almost imperceptibly, but he'd know it was there, that shift in expression from 'blank' to 'amused.' He hopes it's an amused expression, anyway.

He starts three texts:

**Are you ok alone with him?**

and

**Why did you track Banner down?**

and

**Stay safe**

and sticks the phone in his pocket, texts unsent. It isn't his business. He huffs out a breath, and Maria Hill glances over at him from the bench across.

Clint nearly misses the vibration of his phone against his leg in the vibration of the plane landing.

**NR: bng deployd agn immdtly  
hv to go silnt  
Wll tlk to you abt bruce soon**

"Yeah," mutters Clint at his phone. Hill is looking at him again, unbuckling the seatbelt that Clint didn't bother to wear. "Yeah, I want the scoop."

\--- 

There are people who would say that the Black Widow is fearless, but Clint knows that's wrong. Natasha's afraid of stuff. Not a lot, but she's afraid of losing control, or having it taken from her. Of being left without an out. Of wasps.

Not like Clint can talk. He's afraid of dentists.

But Nat keeps her fears close to her, under her skin and behind her eyes. Clint once saw her eat a wasp - caught in sugar, dead, and danger-free, but still. He doesn't think he could eat a dentist.

Tasha's afraid of the Hulk. They talked about it, after New York, the way she froze up when Banner transformed in the Helicarrier. Nat pushed through it to fight Clint, and Clint is damn proud of her for stepping up and taking him out before he could do any more damage on Loki's orders, but that doesn't erase the fear. Not just of the Hulk, but of Banner too, because Tasha's never been very good at keeping clear divisions.

Clint keeps a lot of divisions in his head. It comes from growing up as a circus kid, surrounded by stage names and the real people underneath. The Magnificent Steiner isn't the same as Wolfgang, the guy who plays him. Clint didn't really figure that out until he was ten, why Buck Chisholm didn't answer to Trick Shot after his act was over, but he gets it now. Hawkeye is a facet of Clint Barton, not the whole. Natasha is Natasha, but she's also Nat, who organizes and plots and keeps a level of security that's either ridiculous or appropriate, depending on who you listen to. And there's Tasha, who drinks syrupy sweet coffee in the morning and leans into Clint's side like they fit together. And there's Natalia, whose name Clint hasn't heard since the day after they met, when they stopped trying to kill each other and started trying to understand each other.

He's gotten distracted. The point is, people aren't coherent, orderly packages. You can be scared of the Hulk and still think Banner's a great guy, and vice versa.

Natasha sees the world in black and white - not good and evil, but _threat_ and _safe_.

Clint doesn't think that Banner is either one of those things.

When Natasha calls, on an encrypted line in the middle of the night, Clint does not expound on his grand theory of Natasha-Banner interaction.

But he doesn't stop thinking about it, either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes, this chapter: brief introspection about past mind control.  
> Another short chapter, but the next ones should be longer.

A month or so after Sevastopol, Clint is in Bucharest as security for a SHIELD-sponsored diplomatic mission. It's dead boring, because nothing's going to happen to a top-secret talk about ball-bearing manufacture, but security needs to be there anyway. Clint treats it as a vacation - keeps his bow and knives close, but walks around on his off hours, instead of holing up in a nest to keep an eye on everything.

He's not surprised when he spots Banner in a crowd, watching some kids having a rap battle or something. Nat had said Banner was planning on going up through Bulgaria after Istanbul, and Bucharest is a big city near the border. Clint waves until Banner spots him, and then works his way through the crowd, making sure Banner can see him coming.

"Fancy meeting you here," says Banner. Clint starts to say something back, but Banner hushes him, his eyes on the two young women in the center of the crowd, one of them gesturing and speaking while the other sneers. Clint shrugs and lets the words wash over him, rhythmic and passionate and totally incomprehensible. But Clint can blend into a crowd - he chuckles when everyone else is laughing, and murmurs when the young man in front of him gasps. Bruce's gaze starts flicking over to Clint, and soon the show is over and the crowd is breaking up.

"Did you actually say 'rhubarb, rhubarb?'" Banner's half-smile is gaining strength.

"I had to say something," says Clint. "You think anyone else noticed?"

"They probably weren't paying as much attention to you," says Banner. They're the only people standing in the street, now, and Clint starts to walk, following an older woman with a leather briefcase before switching to a man with a powder-blue sweater. Directionless walking in a strange town reveals you as a tourist or a new-comer - if you don't have a direction, you can steal one from somebody else. For a second Clint thinks Banner is going to stay there and watch him walk away, but then Banner catches up with him and Clint slows to let him.

"You speak Romanian too?" asks Clint.

"Not well," says Banner. "But it's not that hard to understand. It's kind of like Italian."

Clint shakes his head. "I could really use your language skills," he says. "I've been leaning pretty hard on English and French while I'm here."

"It gets easier after your fifth language," says Banner. "You start focusing on similarities."

Bruce Banner: nuclear physicist, occasional superhero, polyglot. All Clint has going for him is a trick bow. Sometimes life really isn't fair.

Well, Banner would probably agree with him on that last part. It's not like life has been particularly easy on either of them.

"So I had to buy myself lunch in Sevastopol," says Clint. "And I still have your sweatpants."

"You were going to have to buy yourself lunch anyway. I didn't have any money. I still don't." Banner puts his hands in his pockets, pulls them inside out like he's in a cartoon. Clint waits to see if any moths want to fly out, but there's just lint in there. It makes Banner's point, anyway.

"Then let me buy you lunch too, this time," says Clint. He glances at the sky, the sun fading below the buildings. "Dinner. Whatever."

For a second Banner looks like he's going to argue, and Clint's not sure whether he would let it go or if he would inform Banner that dinner and his company is non-negotiable. He doesn't have to find out, because Banner blows out a breath and steers Clint's apparently-purposeful but functionally-aimless walk down a different alleyway.

"Is Italian okay?" he asks. "There's a restaurant around here."

The place is only a couple minutes away, and it's small, already filling up even this early in the day. They snag a table in the back, and Clint graciously takes the chair that's turned away from the rest of the restaurant, letting Banner to sit with his back to   
the wall. A waiter drifts by with their menus.

"So," says Clint. "Romania."

Banner puts on a pair of glasses and peers at the menu. Clint glances down at his. It's all in Romanian, but the names look familiar, bar a few extra vowels. He can take his chances.

"You're not much closer to India," says Clint, when he's figured out what he's going to order and Banner still hasn't said anything. Banner looks up at him, over his glasses.

"Any more observations, Captain Obvious?"

"That shirt looks good on you," says Clint, which isn't true because that shirt is a muddy beige that doesn't suit Banner's coloring at all. But he can't resist, when Banner's handed him a straight line like that.

Clint would scold himself for teasing the Hulk if Banner didn't look so damn amused. It shouldn't be this easy to get a smile out of the guy, but Banner walks around with that half-smile all the time, and now half the things Clint says seem to make Banner broaden it into something real.

"I'm trying to figure out how to get to India without going through Afghanistan or Iran." Banner takes off his glasses, folds them up and puts them in his pocket. "This may be just me, but I don't think it's a good idea to get anywhere near an American military operation or an aspiring nuclear power."

"You could go up through Russia," says Clint. That's a long and difficult journey to make over land with no money, though, and from the look on Banner's face he knows it.

"I'm exploring some options," says Banner, and then the waiter shows up and Banner orders in a careful knot of syllables that Clint doesn't understand, and Clint points to the menu and hopes.

"SHIELD could fly you over," says Clint, when the waiter's taken their menus.

"I don't think I trust Nick Fury to let me go, once I'm under SHIELD's auspices again." Banner shakes his head. "Sorry, Clint, but it's better for everyone if I make my own way."

Clint stares at Banner for a minute. He'd looked good at Sevastopol, but traveling on no money seems to be taking its toll. The lines around his eyes are deeper, now, and his skin hangs loose, like he's lost some weight. And, as mentioned before, his shirt is terrible.

"Yeah, this looks better for you," Clint drawls, and Banner's fingers tap tap tap on the table.

"SHIELD was supposed to cut me loose," he says. "That was the deal. I helped save the world and I destroyed a lot more buildings, and now I'm supposed to be left alone."

"We are leaving you alone," says Clint. "Word is, keep distance from the Hulk. I'm breaking that by seeing you now."

"Why would you do that?" asks Banner. He sounds genuinely curious, but still a little hostile. Clint needs to give him a good answer.

Too bad he doesn't have one. Why is he here? Clint doesn't like it when he doesn't know why he's doing something, but there it is. He's not operating on much more than a whim here.

"You said it," Clint tries. "We saved the world together."

Banner's fingers tap faster on the table, and the waiter puts two plates down in front of them. Clint didn't get what he thought he had ordered, but whatever, it's food. Banner's still looking skeptical at him when Clint looks up from his pasta again.

"You know what I think?" asks Banner.

Clint doesn't say anything about mind-reading or tin foil hats, because he is _restraining_ himself.

"I think you two are following me." Banner stirs the noodles with his fork. "First you in Sevastopol, and then Natasha in Istanbul and Burgas-"

"Wait, Burgas? Nat didn't say anything about Burgas." Clint takes a sip of water. Nat was supposed to be running an op in Venezuela, not running after scientists-in-hiding in Bulgaria.

"It was about two weeks ago," says Banner. "She said she was tracking-"

"Ex-Hydra agents, right," says Clint. That was another mission, but it shouldn't have run as far east as Burgas. 

He should call Natasha. He will, when this mission is over. It's been too long since they spoke, face to face, and it's easy to leave things out of infrequent texts and hurried phone conversations.

"Look," says Clint. "I'm running into you by accident, straight up. But you're probably right about Tasha. I can't guarantee that she's not acting on orders, but I think it's probably something else." That's about as much as he can say, given that he doesn't actually _know_ why Natasha's been tracking Banner. Clint's all out of answers today, and if Banner keeps pushing him, he'll start making stuff up.

"Why else would she be tracking me?" asks Banner.

And Banner had to push him. Clint looks Banner up and down, and then raises one eyebrow. Then the other eyebrow. He waggles them, because if you're going to try and imply something, you might as well go all the way.

Banner shakes his head, that little smile becoming self-deprecating. "No. Me? Natasha the superspy? No."

"Have it your way." Clint takes a mouthful of noodles, speaks around it in the way Nat hates but Bruce doesn't seem bothered by. "I don't know what she wants out of you."

"Anyway," continues Banner, "I don't really want to get in the middle of your-"

Clint cuts him short, jabbing his fork at Banner. "There's nothing going on. We're buddies."

"Buddies," says Banner, flat.

"Codependent SHIELD operatives who steal each others' clothes," concedes Clint. "Buddies."

The look Banner is leveling at Clint is exactly the same as the one the mandatory counselor had whenever Natasha came up.

"Shut up and eat your food," says Clint.

"How does anything she owns fit you?" asks Banner.

"Badly," says Clint, and stuffs his mouth full of pasta before Banner can ask him anything else.

\---

Nothing happens in Bucharest, and then there's a day of debriefings on the Helicarrier about how nothing happened, and it all ends with Clint in his room, too tired to do anything useful and too awake to think about sleeping.

He should watch something. Cartoons, or one of the TV shows that he keeps up with when he remembers. Clint fusses around with his laptop in the darkened room, and finally he brings up a file from an encrypted cloud server.

Clint's not supposed to have footage from Loki's appearance at the Joint Dark Energy Mission. No one is supposed to have this footage, since that incident is classified, but especially not Clint. But if Clint isn't going to have his own memories of what he did, he'll get his information from other sources.

Clint watches himself, grainy and out of focus, as Loki taps his chest with his scepter. Watches himself as he talks to Loki, walks with him. Watches himself as he shoots Director Fury.

He's seen this half a dozen times, but it still feels like it's made up, unreal. Clint pauses the video and brings his arm up, hand clutching an imaginary pistol, pulls the trigger at the tiny Fury on the screen. Maybe muscle memory will retain something that his brain has lost.

Clint doesn't feel anything. The movement isn't unfamiliar, it's _too_ familiar, he's aimed and fired under other people's orders so many times that his body can't pick one incident out of hundreds, thousands. Clint hits play again, watches himself walk away with Loki and Selvig, and Fury get up and use his radio, and then the building starts breaking up and the camera is smashed, the picture blurring into static.

So much for that. Clint pulls up another video, of the Helicarrier on the day he attacked it.

His phone rings, and Clint rubs his eyes, closes every window and shuts his laptop before answering.

"Bruce is still in Bucharest," says Nat, when Clint picks up the phone.

"And you're there with him." Clint gets up, stretching his legs. "You know, I was in Bucharest."

"I was still in Valencia," says Tasha, and if Clint thinks about it hard enough she sounds apologetic. "I'm only here for the day, and then I'm meeting with Stark and Potts. Liaison work."

"Okay," says Clint. He's in his room and he's pacing, hand tapping against his thigh. He must be tense, because he's usually still when he talks, and he likes that, likes the calm. He breathes and tries to force the stillness back as they chat about nothing in particular. 

"So you told Bruce we weren't in a relationship," says Nat, because there's only so much pointlessness she can stand.

"I told him we weren't romantic," corrects Clint. "Buddies is a relationship."

There's a pause. Clint decides to call that an agreement and not worry about what Nat would call their relationship. But he's still allowed to worry about what kind of relationship Natasha and Banner have.

"I was trying not to step on your toes," Clint adds, fishing.

"Thanks," says Tasha. Clint decides to give up on subtlety.

"And what _are_ your intentions to the good doctor, Tasha?"

"He's hot, right?" asks Nat. She's always been good at avoiding questions.

"If you like time bombs," says Clint, sharply.

There's silence on the line. Clint sits down and feels like an asshole.

"Yeah," he says, when it's been a minute and Nat hasn't hung up on him yet. "He's got the friendly professor thing down. I like his glasses."

He can _hear_ Tasha smiling, or he can imagine that he does. "I've been bringing him briefings with extra-small print," she says.

"You," Clint breathes into the receiver, "are evil."

Buddies gossip about their crushes and laugh at each others' jokes.

Clint can do buddies, for as long as Tasha needs him to.

\---

Natasha keeps her fears close, drawing them in nearer and nearer until they're a part of her, little targets painted on her back the same color as her flesh.

That's not an metaphor Clint would come up with if he was more than half-awake. But it's late at night and he's drifting, aware enough that he knows his nightmares aren't true but asleep enough to believe in them anyway.

Clint pushes his fears further and further away until he can only see them glinting out of the corner of his eye and he can't remember what he was afraid of. That's not self-awareness, that's three different therapists' 'original' insight wrapped in another bad metaphor.

There's growling in Clint's ears and a flash of ice-blue in his periphery, and his hand reaches for his bow and only finds his pillow.

He tries some of that lucid dreaming, maybe he can beat Loki's head in with the pillow, and it'll all be ridiculous and he'll fall back asleep, but he's got a headache and Loki's laughter in his ears and no threats anywhere, nothing real, and Clint doesn't sleep anymore that night.

Agent Hill doesn't look concerned when he reports the next morning, but Clint knows what he looks like, the circles under his eyes. Hill doesn't say anything, either, but Clint's next three missions are easy, routine, just the thing for an operative who might need to be sent back to medical if you push him too hard.

Clint's fourth mission is in Doomstadt, though, so maybe SHIELD was just trying to give him a break before throwing him back in the deep end.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes, this chapter: violence, explicit sex, introspection about canon suicidal tendencies/suicide attempts. Gratuitous Doom. Probably not as heavy as these notes make it sound, jsyk.

SHIELD needs to retrieve an ancient manuscript that Doctor Doom has stolen (or 'liberated,' according to his official press release) from the British Museum. Clint's told that it could do unimaginable harm if Doom is allowed to keep it and use it in his techno-mystical experiments, but also that preventing that harm isn't worth the international incident of sending a full SHIELD team, let alone recalling the Avengers. So they decided to send Hawkeye solo.

The mission briefing had been chock-full of hypocrisy and doublethink, to the point that Agent Hill hadn't even tried to run the briefing, brought in Director Fury instead. Clint still thinks that the most ridiculous part is that they expect _him_ to not cause an international incident. He's stealthy, yes, and effective, but he's still recognizable. Especially after New York.

Well, it'll be a challenge, anyway.

When Clint's plane touches down in Latveria, he's wearing a suit and tie. He's carrying a briefcase. He's also itching to pull off the tie, because he hates these things - feels like someone's getting ready to strangle him, all the time. But Clive Waverly, mild-mannered investor-slash-entrepreneur, wears a tie.

The security agents at Doomport aren't wearing ties, they're wearing armor. Clint tries not to look too envious as they pat him down and wave him through. 

He's not normally a disguise guy - that's Nat's specialty. The only times Clint plays infiltrator is when he can impersonate a wise-cracking bruiser, i.e., himself. But no one's got much intel on Doom's little fiefdom, and it's near-impossible to sneak in without putting Doom on alert. Too many security satellites and robots.

So Clint decided to walk in the front door.

\----

"Doom needs investment capital from no man," says Doctor Victor von Doom. Obviously. The guy loves third-person, though Clint can't really blame him for wanting to say his awesome name as much as possible. 'Barton' doesn't have the same ring to it.

"Of course not," says Clint, with a self-deprecating smile that's blatantly stolen from Banner. "You're the ruler of an entire nation. But I'm sure you've had ideas which you don't have _time_ to develop, given your busy schedule and intense creativity. My firm would simply provide development and marketing, for a small cut of the profits."

Doom inclines his head, looking pleased and a little amused. As much as you can tell through his metal mask. Clint's going off a tiny crinkle around his eyes, here.

"Latveria does not starve for researchers," Doom pronounces. "We have more than enough development. But perhaps your marketing skills may be of use. Doom has no patience for the whims of the public."

"Then I think we could have a very fruitful partnership." Clint shows his teeth. "Especially if your R and D department is all that you say."

Doom stands up, and Clint jumps up too, because it's probably a mortal offense to stay seated when the ruler of Latveria is on his feet. 

"Follow," says Doom. "Doom will show you."

Clint gathers up papers with made-up figures in them, stuffing them into his briefcase before trailing Doom through the castle. This is good - a tour will give him at least part of the layout, since the castle's been destroyed and rebuilt so often that none of SHIELD's maps are up-to-date. Clint notes passageways out of the corners of his eyes and marks a few libraries for later.

Up three staircases and down four, and then they're on a landing, overlooking a huge room full of machinery, tools, and workers in lab coats. It's very impressive, even if Clint isn't the man to appreciate it. He watches one woman distilling some chemical in a fragile-looking glassware apparatus, while the man one table over solders together heavy pieces of sheet metal. Doom probably doesn't care much about work-place safety (supervillains never do, though admittedly neither do superheroes - Clint's seen Tony Stark's workshop).

"These are my laboratories," says Doom, waving an imperious hand at the little hive of productivity. "But this represents only a fraction of the research undertaken in Doomstadt. The arboretums are this way."

Doom starts to walk off, but Clint's picked out one important guy out of a sea of white-coated scientists and assistants. Clint hesitates, and he can see Doom noticing, so he figures he might as well go for it.

"Is that Bruce Banner?" he asks, as innocent and surprised as he can make it. "Hey, Doctor Banner?"

Banner turns, and Clint waves.

"Unauthorized personnel are not allowed-" begins Doom, but Clint is already half-way down the stairs. Banner's staring at him, and he's gone a little white. Well, so long as he doesn't go green.

"Clive Waverly." Clint sticks out a hand, and Bruce juggles the tablet and pen he's holding so that he can take it. "I don't know if you remember me-"

"Of course I do," says Banner, warmly. "How are you, Clive?"

"Doing great." Clint lets Banner's hand go. "How are they treating you here?"

"Can't complain," says Banner, but his half-smile looks strained. His eyes flick over Clint's shoulder, and Clint catches a corner of green cape in his peripheral vision. Doom can move quiet for a guy in armor. "No," continues Banner, "I really _can't_ complain."

"A touching reunion," says Doom. His words sound like he's gritting them out, under that mask. "But unfortunately we have business. Perhaps you two can... 'catch up' later."

"I owe you lunch," says Banner, carefully, and with Doom looming over Clint, Banner's hunching even smaller than he normally carries himself. "Maybe-"

"Yeah, let's get dinner after this," says Clint. "I'm staying at the hotel, call it six?"

Banner nods, and Clint allows himself to be swept along with Doom.

"Have you known Banner for long?" asks Doom. The question is so casual that Clint knows it must be important.

No one knows Banner is here or SHIELD would have included it in the briefing. Hell, it would have _been_ the briefing - Doom and the Hulk are a killer combination, literally. So Doom doesn't want it spread that Banner's here, especially by someone who knows about the Hulk.

"Met him at a conference, and we hit it off," says Clint. "I haven't seen him in years - I don't know why he dropped out of the biotech circuit."

Doom grunts. "I understand that Banner has a... medical condition. He is seldom in the public eye."

Clint makes an appropriate noise of pity and fellow feeling. Doom will probably still try to assassinate him within the day, but he's escaped any immediate ramifications. Doom would probably like to let him out of the castle before killing him anyway - these are nice rugs, and getting blood out of antique weaving is difficult.

The arboretum is really boring. Clint angles for a tour of the libraries, but gets nowhere. Nor are there any convenient airshaft entrances, as far as he can see. Getting the manuscript is going to take some doing.

Doom kicks him out at four, and Clint spends the next two hours scoping out restaurants until he finds one with high ambient noise and poor lighting. They're not going to find anywhere devoid of spies, so this will have to do.

Banner shows at six, punctual. Clint watches him walk down the cobble streets to Clint's olde-worlde hotel, and tries to keep his face neutral. Banner looks a little better-fed, a little less threadbare, but his walk is full of tension and his eyes have new lines around them.

"I'm surprised they let you out," says Clint, when Banner's near enough to hear an undertone.

"I think Victor's trying to find out how important you are to me," says Banner, equally quiet. "Whether he can kidnap you as a hostage, or if he should just kill you to get you out of the way."

"Shit," says Clint, though he's suspected as much. "I'd rather be kidnapped. I'll propose marriage over stew, or something."

Banner smiles and shrugs and ducks his head, keeps quiet as they walk over to the restaurant. Clint puts a hand on Banner's lower back to guide him, after asking permission. It really would be good for Doom to believe that this is some kind of conference fuckbuddy rendezvous.

The restaurant is an inn, built in the last ten years but done up like it's been there for centuries, to appeal to whatever tourists Doomstadt manages to attract. The food is all traditional and the menus are in English, but Clint lets Banner order because he doesn't recognize anything anyway.

"So," says Clint, when the tracht-wearing waitress is gone. "Latveria."

"I'm consulting," says Banner.

"What could Doom possibly have you consulting on that isn't going to turn out disastrous for the world?" asks Clint. It's rhetorical, and Banner frowns at his napkin.

"Can I talk here?" he mutters.

"Sure," says Clint. "We're difficult to hear clearly, and anyway, there's nothing he can do to you and I don't plan to be here long enough to find out what he can do to me."

"He wants to make Latveria a nuclear power," says Banner.

"That's all?" Clint would've expected Doom to be more interested in making monsters.

"I told him I wouldn't be involved in any super-soldier research," says Banner. He doesn't look up, but his frown melts into something a little vicious. "It makes me _anxious_."

Clint grunts an acknowledgement. "I thought you were trying to avoid aspiring nuclear powers."

"Sure, _trying_ ," says Banner. "I didn't plan on accepting Victor's offer at all. But, I was convinced that it was in my best interests. And the best interests of everyone in Cluj-Napoca."

"Got it," says Clint. "Hulk blackmail." He puts on an affected accent and says "this is a nice town, with the fountains and all. It'd be a shame if something were to... happen to it."

Banner looks up at last, eyes meeting Clint's. "Why is your mobster accent from California?"

"Only accent I can do worth a damn," says Clint, and thankfully the waitress takes this relatively-innocent moment to set down their meals. Clint has some kind of vegetable soup with meat ravioli in it, and he decides he approves of Banner's taste.

Banner's looking at him, though, jaw set. He's not touching his plate of goulash. "Did you come to rescue me?"

Clint mulls it over, considers lying, but decides Banner deserves the truth. "Nah," he says. "No one knows you're here. This is just-"

"A weird coincidence," finishes Banner. His shoulders slump.

"Hey, don't be like that," says Clint. Hopelessness is a terribly familiar look on Banner, and Clint doesn't like it. "You have a plan to get out of here?"

Banner shrugs. "I'm working with Victor for now. He has diplomatic immunity, so even if anyone knew I'm here, I don't think they'd come after me. But Victor also has a fleet of private jets."

"You think he can get you to India, if you build him a nuclear power plant" says Clint.

"I think I might be able to hack a jet's autopilot before Victor tries to steal my blood and restart the Hulk experiments without me," corrects Banner. "I just need to get to the hangar. Unfortunately, those are pretty heavily guarded, and the other guy doesn't really like enclosed spaces." Banner finally takes a bite of his food.

"Yeah," says Clint, imagining the Hulk trying to fly a plane. "Yeah, I can see why that would be a problem."

"So," says Banner. "Why are you here, if not for me?"

Clint takes a piece of paper from his briefcase, folds it up, and passes it under the table. "Looking for a book. That's a photo of it before it was stolen from the British Museum."

Banner slips his glasses on and studies the photograph. He holds it tight to his body, away from possible cameras. Clint wonders how much of Banner's discretion was learned during his time in hiding and how much of it is new, forced on him by Doom's personal oversight. Either way, it's useful for Clint's purposes. 

"I've seen this," says Banner. "It's in Victor's kitchen."

Clint stops eating his ravioli soup, and stares at Banner while he tries to swallow. Some questions come to mind: why were you in Doom's kitchen? Why do you call Doom 'Victor?' Is anything going on there?

"He does feed us, occasionally," says Banner, dryly. "I noticed it on his coffee table while we were discussing some construction plans."

"I was just going to ask why he kept a valuable manuscript in his kitchen," says Clint, defensively. He shouldn't be that easy to figure out.

"I think he likes to read in the mornings," muses Banner. "That table is covered in journal articles and books."

"Okay," says Clint. "I need that book, and you need to get to the hangar. Let's see what we can do."

Banner takes off his glasses and focuses on his goulash, and for a moment Clint wonders if he should have asked if Banner wanted to team up instead of just presenting it as a certainty. Clint's not used to relying on people besides Natasha, but somewhere in his head he figures Banner's on his team. Clint relied on Banner in New York, even though he'd never properly met the guy, and the Hulk came through, took out several tons of Chitauri. But Clint was kind of messed up, at the time, and he knows he shouldn't trust the thoughts he had then.

He draws breath to tell Banner 'no pressure' and 'I'm sure you can make your own way,' but Banner looks up from his plate again and takes a sip of water. Clint waits, watching.

"Clive?" asks Banner. "Seriously?"

"This is what happens when they let me choose my own aliases," says Clint, spreading his hands. "I make them easy to remember."

Banner nods and relaxes, just a bit. Clint can see it in his shoulders, in the way Banner leans forward and gestures between them. "The guard change is at two am," says Banner. "Think we can be in the hangar by then?"

Clint grabs a pencil and a notepad out of his briefcase, starts to sketch out the beginnings of a timetable, working backwards from the two am deadline. He's not going to waste time on telling Banner that he's pleased they're working together, or revealing his doubts. But Clint still grins, as Banner leans close, making corrections in a low voice. Mostly he grins because Banner is dragging the edge of one rolled-up sleeve into his goulash, and part of it is for the benefit of the woman three tables over who is definitely spying for Doom, but some of it is just for Banner, and for having someone to rely on.

\---

Banner won't hulk out, because he doesn't want to hurt any of Doom's innocent staff or the kidnapped scientists. Clint argues with him about it some, but honestly he doesn't really need to deal with the Hulk here. And Banner's right, the green guy wouldn't fit in one of the small hypersonic jets and they don't have time to wait for him to calm down and become Bruce again. But it would be a lot less complicated for the Hulk to just smash everything and let Clint pick the book out of the rubble.

Once they iron out their differences and settle the details, the new plan is this:

Banner will get the manuscript from its current place on Doom's coffee table, crash Doom's surveillance equipment or generally create as much computer-related chaos as possible, and meet Clint in the courtyard at one am. Clint will be there, having disabled as many guards and Doombots as necessary. Together they'll make tracks for the hangar, on the other side of the grounds from the castle, and hotwire their way out of there. Banner says he's already got a virus set up that should give them a backdoor into the autopilot system - he just has to get close enough to the jets to plug it in. Hitting the hangar at the guard change should give them the space they need.

It's a relatively simple plan. Clint's not surprised when it goes wrong.

It starts when the assassins come to Clint's hotel room. Two thugs with a supervising Doombot, one of those robots that Doom made to look exactly like him. The creation of an egotistical mind, or someone who couldn't get anyone else to model for him. At least Clint was expecting them, had time to change from the monkey suit into his real work clothes.

Doom's assassins go for the lump in the bed, and then the closet, when they realize the lump is made of pillows and the now-empty briefcase. They don't look up.

No one ever looks up.

Clint's comfortable in the ceiling's crossbeams, legs folded up in a crouch and his bow ready. He could wait here until Doom's cronies get bored and go away, and Clint plans to. God bless top-floor rooms. God bless old-style timber frame hotels, with sturdy beams that don't even creak when Clint shifts his weight.

Maybe they creak a little, enough for cybernetic ears. The Doombot _does_ look up.

So much for stealth. Clint looses an arrow, and the Doombot goes down, shaft sticking out of its eye. Doom needs to armor those things more.

The two human thugs are moving, and the next arrow goes in the bigger one's thigh before Clint draws a knife and drops, leaving the bow up on the beam. Bows aren't great for close range against two opponents, when they can distract you and keep you from making a second shot.

The thugs are good, moving fast and hitting smart, not just hard. Clint lets a few blows glance over him, watching for guns. There aren't any - either Doom wanted him captured, or he was relying on the Doombot. Either way, it was a mistake. These guys are okay, but Clint's been training with Nat. It's going to take a lot more than this to bring him in.

The bigger thug's favoring his leg, but the smaller one's picking up the slack, moving in on Clint from his friend's injured side, keeping Clint from taking advantage of the weakness. Clint swipes at the smaller thug with his knife, missing the guy's face as he jumps back, but catching his shoulder. While the smaller guy is swearing and trying to see how bad it is, Clint kicks out and sweeps the bigger guy's legs out from under him. He goes down hard, lands on his thigh wound. Clint ignores the screaming as the smaller guy comes at him, pushing him back into the wall. The thug focuses on the knife, grabbing Clint's hand and pinning it to the wall. But you shouldn't just focus on the weapons, instead of the person using them. Clint waits until the guy leans in a bit too close, and then he bucks his head forward, crushing the smaller guy's nose with his forehead.

The smaller guy topples. The bigger thug is still on the floor, and he looks like he might be feeling the blood loss. Clint shakes his head, trying to make sure his brain hasn't dislocated, and then grins. Still plenty of time to make it to the rendezvous.

A metal hand clamps around Clint's ankle, and he looks down into the one-eyed face of the Doombot.

"Won't stay down, huh?" Clint says. He flips the knife in his hand, gets ready to throw. "Just take a nap, there's a good-"

The electric shock seizes through him just as Clint sends the knife into the Doombot's remaining eye. The Doombot jerks and collapses, which isn't much comfort to Clint since he's currently doing the exact same thing.

\---

When Clint wakes up, everyone else is still down. Small mercies. If he hadn't dealt with the thugs before the Doombot sucker-punched him (or sucker-shocked him, whatever), he'd probably be in a stockade in Doom's living room by now.

Clint's watch needs resetting, after the shock the Doombot gave him. He presses a few buttons and waits for the satellites to feed it the correct time.

One am. Fuck.

Clint grabs his bow from the ceiling-beam and heads for the castle as fast as he can. He's running late. If Banner's already in the courtyard, he'll be worried or, worse, under fire from the guards that Clint didn't manage to take out.

The courtyard is beautiful, young trees and delicately grown shrubberies outlining a carefully cut lawn. It's also built like a firing range, with no cover as soon as you emerge out of the garden paths and into the courtyard proper. Clint's seen the design before, at old castles and new estates. No one can sneak up from the gardens without being seen by the house.

It works against Doom as well - Clint had planned to stay in the shrubberies and pick off the guards that patrol the courtyard, while Banner took out the surveillance equipment inside.

But there aren't any guards in the courtyard. Just Banner, clutching a briefcase and talking to Doom.

Clint thinks _betrayed_ , the word clawing its way through him before he kicks and shoves it down. The next thought is that Bruce is probably in trouble. Either way, Clint needs to get closer, to hear, and he moves through the shrubberies as silently as possible, the leaves barely stirring around him.

"How long must we wait for your accomplice?" Doom sounds angry, and _betrayed_ flashes through Clint again and his knuckles twist white around his bow, Banner must have told Doom everything-

"I told you, I don't have an accomplice," says Banner, and Clint breathes out. Right. Banner is a good guy, Doom is the villain. Keep it together.

"You were conspiring with the so-called Waverly." Fortunately, Doom must be totally unaware of Clint's tiny trust crisis over here, because his focus is all on Banner. "You could not think that you would escape my grounds alone, with that book you stole." 

Banner shrinks a little under Doom's scrutiny, bends but doesn't break. "I don't have your book," he says.

Doom actually scoffs. "Do not be absurd, Banner. Give me the book and the true name of your accomplice, or Doom shall make you do so."

Banner straightens, at that. "You can't make me do anything. Did you forget about the Hulk, or are you just dumb enough to think-"

His voice cuts off as Doom grabs Banner by the throat. Doom's armored glove is glowing red, and spots dance in the air around it. He lifts Banner off of his feet, and Banner convulses, like he's trying to change but can't.

"No man insults Doom's intelligence and lives to tell about it," shouts Doom. "I am prepared for you, Banner, and your strength will be useless against my magic, you-"

Doom stumbles as one of Clint's arrows hits him in the chest. Clint can only barely remember loosing it - if he'd been thinking, he would have picked a more useful one, armor-piercing or explosive or a gas-grenade-

Doom growls and turns to the shrubberies, other hand glowing, and Clint looses another extremely normal arrow at Doom's head.

Doom goes down, this time, because armor is armor but that arrow was going well over 225 miles per hour and even Clint's normal arrows are tipped with steel. Bruce falls with him, coughing and scrambling away as Doom's hand releases.

"Clint?" shouts Bruce, and Clint emerges out of the shrubbery to reassure him and also give Doom a few good kicks while he's down.

"Got the book?" asks Clint. Kicking someone who's covered in armor hurts the feet, but Clint's prepared to sacrifice them for a good cause.

"Yes, come on, run," says Banner, grabbing at Clint's hand, and Clint lets himself be dragged away. Doom's groaning, anyway, and Clint doesn't particularly want to be there when he wakes up.

"Are you okay?" he asks Banner, and Banner nods, his mouth open for breathing, not for talking. Banner's obviously not a runner, the way he's having to concentrate on pushing forward without killing his lungs, so Clint leaves him to it. They're two-thirds of the way to the hangar before they see any guards, and then they find what seems like all of the Doombots in the castle. The 'bots are blocking the way into the hangar, and Banner swears without much breath but a lot of feeling. Clint just grins.

"I'm going to need my hand back," he says, and Banner drops his hand like it's hot. Probably hadn't realized that he was still holding it. Then Clint rotates an explosive arrowhead into position in his quiver, notches the arrow and draws back his string in one easy motion, lets fly into the barricade of Doombots.

Clint and Banner are still running as the explosion shatters robots and sends pieces flying. This is what Clint should have done to Doom himself, though admittedly that probably wouldn't have been great for Banner. Still, something to think about. Clint grabs Banner's hand, this time, tugs him through the dust and loose circuitry.

The hangar is very dark, and Clint almost stops running because he doesn't know where to go, but Banner picks up the slack, leading him forward.

"We want the five sixty-two," says Banner, pointing to the dim outline of a jet in the back of the hangar. "It should handle like a SHIELD jet, I think it was based on a captured one."

"Shh!" Clint can see the soft glow of Doombot eyes, coming in behind them. Not all of the 'bots were caught in the explosion. He ducks behind a plane, pulling Banner with him, and some kind of ray gun fries the spot where they had been standing.

The jet Banner wants is five planes down. Clint ducks and starts running beneath the undercarriages, Banner in tow and the Doombots' shots scattering across the planes.

"Oh my god," says Banner, "this is really, really awful."

"If you're going to hulk out on me, now would be a better time than, say, five minutes from now." Clint skids under the last plane and fetches up against the jet. A Doombot pushes the plane out of its way and advances, hand held up. "Just, you know, if you need to get it out of your system."

"I'm fine," pants Banner, but his skin is gleaming green. "The passcode for the five sixty-two is-"

"Don't tell me, just type it in," says Clint, because he's already pulling back his bowstring and aiming an arrow at the foremost Doombot. He lets loose, and then again, and then again, three down with electricity twining up the arrow shafts that sprout from their facsimile eyes, and then Banner is dragging him into the jet and the hatch is locked behind them.

"We're okay," says Clint, checking his arms surreptitiously for scorch marks. "We're okay, right?"

Banner looks at him, and the Doombots slam on the outside of the jet.

"Stop talking and start hacking!" yells Clint.

"I haven't been talking," says Banner, but he's scrambling up into the pilot's seat, plugging a chip into a USB port.

"You're talking now," says Clint, and the wall dents under a robot fist. "Is there any way to make code work faster?"

"The problem's getting the direction right - the default is north, but we want to head east-"

"Bruce," says Clint, very deliberately. "I don't fucking care which direction we're going, as long as it's out of here."

"Right, sure," says Bruce, and then they're moving and Clint hurries up to the cockpit so he can see where they're going. Toward a bunch of boxes.

"Bruce, the runway is over _there_."

"You're the one who just said direction doesn't matter," says Bruce, and his half-smile is back, but apparently that was the extra time he needed because soon they're heading the right direction and the Doombots are chasing them on foot, far too slow.

"In your face, Doom!" shouts Clint, as the jet lifts off of the runway. They're good, they're golden, they're headed for Hungary, apparently, and Hungary has approximately zero death robots-

Flying death robots.

Clint can see a flock of Doombots on the rear monitors, and the jet shakes as they open fire.

"Since when have they been able to fly?" he asks, leaning over Bruce and looking through the control panel for some kind of weapon, Doom never built anything without some kind of weapon-

"This must be what Victor was working on this week," mutters Bruce. He gets out of Clint's way, slumping into the co-pilot's seat and gripping the arm-rests. His eyes are squeezed shut.

"Stay with me, Bruce," says Clint. He really doesn't like Bruce's color. "Not good with flying?"

"Not good with being shot at," says Bruce. "Or flying, yes."

"I can't do this alone," says Clint. "Are there weapons here? Anything I can use on them?"

"I didn't figure out how to hack into the weapons systems," says Bruce. His eyes are still closed, but he gets a laptop from his bag, opens it by touch.

"Then you have to give me control of the plane." Clint's hands are already on the wheel, but the autopilot is firmly steering, rejecting Clint's attempts at evasive action.

"Five minutes." Bruce plugs a USB cord into his computer and then connects it to the plane.

"I don't know if we have five minutes, Bruce." The jet shudders again, and then the autopilot beeps and the wheel starts responding.

"She's all yours," says Bruce, like Clint hadn't noticed. He puts the jet into a dive.

The Doombots have one thing in common with the Chitauri - they can't bank worth a damn. The land outside of Doomstadt is flat and rural, but there are still things to dodge around and let the 'bots smash into - signaling towers, giant satellite dishes, all of Doom's mad scientist apparatus. Clint grins as Doombot number five hits a shuttle launcher platform.

"We have to make it over the border," says Bruce. He has a hand over his eyes, now. "Doom can't send his Doombots into a neighboring country, even in hot pursuit - everyone would treat it like he'd declared war."

"Sure, sure," says Clint, and sends them into a spin. Bruce turns a very unthreatening shade of green and bends over, tucking his head between his knees. "Are you motion sick?"

"Yes," mutters Bruce.

"Hey," says Clint, brightly, eyeing the throttle, "did you know this Doomjet will go hypersonic?"

Bruce groans, but you can't hardly feel the acceleration in the cockpit. Clint appreciates the smoothness - Doom does good work, even if he is an evil genius.

The Doombots keep up through mach 1, but they drop away at mach 2 and the border is closer, closer-

The jet starts trying to turn around.

Clint tries to fight the turn, but the jet is ignoring the wheel again. "Bruce!" he shouts. "Pay attention, I need you!"

Bruce is up and typing on the laptop, glasses settled on his nose this time, that's how you can tell it's serious, and then he shuts the laptop and sets it down. "We have to disable the whole autopilot - Doom's trying to take control of the jet remotely." 

"I thought you _had_ disabled the autopilot," says Clint. Their speed is slowing, now, as they return.

 

"Disable permanently," clarifies Bruce. "Manually. Do you have a penknife?"

It's Clint's turn to squeeze his eyes shut, as Banner cuts wires and tries not to electrocute himself. Clint doesn't like this, the feeling of losing control, not having any way to fight it. They should never have stolen Doom's plane, if it was going to end up like this.

"There," says Bruce, somewhere behind Clint, and the jet is responding again.

Clint sends them into another spin, just because he can. Bruce says something and he sounds annoyed, but Clint grins and aims for the border.

"I'm not done," says Bruce. "The radar box has some connections, and it's over on your left-"

"Lean over," says Clint. "I can't really let go of the wheel."

Bruce probably nods, but Clint can't see him from here, so the first thing he knows is that Bruce has his left hand on Clint's thigh and is leaning over Clint's lap with a knife in his right hand. Clint thinks pure thoughts and not about how much this reminds him of his last friends-with-benefits night with Tasha. Or about Bruce's warm hand in his, or about how hot Bruce looks when he's wearing glasses, or about-

Bruce cuts out a couple more wires, and the map shows that they're in Hungary, and Clint punches the air.

"Hooray," says Bruce, dryly, folding up the penknife, and it would be very easy to pull him up and kiss him, but Clint's pretty sure that the fewer surprises the better, after all that.

Bruce doesn't seem to agree, because when he straightens up, he seizes Clint's face in his hands and presses their mouths together. Clint grabs his shoulders and keeps him there, warm and alive and wow, Bruce is actually a pretty good kisser, until the radio pops and crackles on. 

"Miscreants," snarls Doom. "You have not heard the last of this. My minions will find you, in whatever hole you hide yourself, until you beg for-"

"Should I cut the radio too?" asks Bruce.

"We'll probably need it," says Clint, "Let me just-" He turns the volume knob and Doom's rantings settle down into an angry murmur.

"So," says Bruce, slowly. "Was that okay? I- Sometimes I don't really get 'signals.'"

"That was great," says Clint. "And when I don't have to steer and watch for stray geese, we are doing it again. For longer."

"Oh," says Bruce, and settles back into his own chair. "Right, steering. Very important thing, steering."

Clint glances over and Bruce is smiling, wide and proper, and Clint feels his own grin starting.

"Next question," says Bruce. "Is Natasha going to kill me? Because I'd like to start on my will."

"She'll just be jealous I got there first," says Clint.

Bruce goes blank on him, and then his hands are worrying at each other. "Oh," he says. "Um."

"What?" asks Clint, and then he _gets it_ and for a second he's actually not steering, just clutching the control wheel until Bruce makes a noise and Clint remembers why it is an especially terrible idea to crash this plane, with _this_ passenger.

"Okay," says Clint. "So maybe I'm a little jealous that _she_ got there first."

"I thought she would have told you." Bruce looks at the ceiling, then the floor.

"Yeah, me too," mutters Clint, and Bruce looks at _him_ at last, and Clint swallows, says, louder, "Look, if it doesn't bother you, then it doesn't bother me. We can all continue on just like we were."

"Okay. Forget I said anything." Bruce rubs at his forehead. "Forget I _did_ anything."

"Nope," says Clint, popping the 'p.' "No, the kissing is on the record. All in favor of post-daring-escape makeouts, say 'aye.'"

"Oh," says Bruce, again, but he sounds a lot happier about it this time. "Aye. Definitely aye"

\---

Flight time from Latveria to Kolkata is just a couple of hours at mach 6, and it feels like less. Bruce falls asleep in his chair, slumped in on himself and probably drooling a bit on Doom's black leather upholstery. Clint keeps the Doomjet's stealth shields up and tries not to think, not think at all. Flying manual is good for that. All he has to focus on is the speed, and the direction, and the radar, and not on Nat and Bruce.

Well, maybe he focuses on Bruce a little. He's quiet even when he's sleeping, doesn't snore at all, and his hair looks ridiculous.

When they reach the Indian border, Clint starts to decelerate before reaching over and shaking Bruce awake. Bruce wakes up slow, and Clint can see that he'd rather stay asleep and miss the rest of the flight.

He also wants to land in a secluded mountain valley or some shit.

"No," says Clint. "See, Bruce, this is why we have the radio."

Bruce looks skeptical, but Clint just radios in to air traffic control and lands the plane at the airport. He has to wave his SHIELD identification around a lot, and Bruce's consultant credentials from Latveria and SHIELD, but eventually they make it out of the airport and into a hotel room in the bright and shiny side of Kolkata. Bruce is sprawled out on the bed like he's found heaven.

"I love this place," says Bruce, eyes closed. "I love sheets."

"Should I leave you and the bed alone together?" asks Clint. It's half tease and half serious. There are two beds in the room, and he could take the other. "I wouldn't want to intrude."

Bruce cracks an eye open. "Come here," he says. "Do you want to, uh-"

"Post-daring-escape makeouts?" says Clint, and Bruce smiles at him and beckons.

Kissing Bruce is good, slow and careful and a little sleepy, Bruce's hums as Clint shifts on top of him and Clint breaking away to ask if he can touch Bruce's shoulders, if he can kiss his neck, if he can touch his chest-

"You can touch me anywhere," says Bruce, at last. He sounds a little exasperated.

"Anywhere?" Clint raises his eyebrows, looks down.

"Fuck, _please_ ," says Bruce, angling his hips up. Clint grins and unzips him.

For a second Clint thinks that he can taste Natasha on Bruce's lips, but that's a ridiculous and really creepy thing to think, so he shoves that into the back of his mind and forgets it. It's more like he can see what Natasha must have seen - the way Bruce's hair falls into his eyes, and the way his hands clench and unclench, and the way his mouth falls open but he doesn't make much noise, just hums and little gasping breaths. It's beautiful, and Clint is glad that he's here to see it, to see Bruce.

"I don't have a change of clothes," says Bruce, when Clint can tell he's close. "I- this is awkward, but-"

"Yeah, I probably shouldn't get come on the uniform," says Clint. Wouldn't be the first time, but Bruce is sensible, that's good. Clint thinks he's taking a second to calm down, too, but that's just a guess.

They break to get naked, and Clint makes a note to do that first, next time. Not that he doesn't enjoy watching Bruce step out of his boxers, turned away from Clint so he can see the weird scientific diagram tattooed on the small of Bruce's back.

Bruce looks over his shoulder, and it's Clint's turn to beckon him back to bed. 

Bruce sits down, kisses Clint, pulls away, says "hey." Bruce's smile fills Clint's range of vision. "Is it okay if I touch you?"

"Baby," drawls Clint, "you can touch me anywhere."

"Anywhere?" asks Bruce, trying to imitate Clint's voice, and Clint laughs.

"No grabbing on my neck, you don't want to find out what reflex that triggers. But everywhere else should be good, if you want to-" Clint tries to finish with 'experiment,' but the last word comes out in a squeak, his hips bucking up to meet Bruce's hand on his dick. Bruce's half-smile is more of a smirk, and he says "Tell me if I do anything wrong," before his mouth closes on one of Clint's nipples.

"This is good," says Clint, trying to catch his breath. He lets himself be pushed back, Bruce leaning over him. One of his hands tangles in Bruce's hair. "Keep doing this. Can I pull on your hair?"

Bruce gives him a thumbs up, and Clint tugs, guiding Bruce to his other nipple, then back up to his mouth. They kiss for a while, and even when they break apart, they don't move away from each other. Bruce leans his forehead against Clint's, and they breathe each other's air in gasps.

"I really like you," mumbles Bruce, against Clint's lips. His hips stutter as he rubs against Clint's thigh, comes.

"Same," says Clint, and arches his back, coming in Bruce's hand.

He lays there for a second, feeling warm and comfortable and pleased with himself until Bruce starts to snore and Clint starts feeling a bit trapped underneath him. He pushes him off, gently, and goes to the bathroom for a washcloth. Cleaning them both up only takes a second, and Bruce sleeps through the whole thing, completely out. Clint lies down next to him, taking advantage of a chance to study Bruce without having to simultaneously fly a plane.

Bruce is a kind of a hairy guy, solidly built now that he's had a few weeks of eating regular meals and not traveling. Clint wants to run his fingers over Bruce's stomach, see if the hair is as soft as it looks, but he's not sure if Bruce would be okay with Clint touching him while he's asleep. 

The only thing Bruce is wearing now is a medical bracelet, a surgical steel tag on some kind of thin cord. Clint pulls on it and it stretches wide without much tension. It's obviously not a normal material. Maybe Starktech. Or Bannertech, if that's a thing.

Bruce is still asleep, even if he twitches and mumbles while he's doing it. Clint flips the tag over to see what's engraved on the other side.

_BLOOD INFECTION - TREAT AS BIOHAZARD_

Which is sound advice for any medic encountering a random casualty, but probably even more important when the patient's blood is running with gamma radiation. Clint's more concerned about the second line.

_DO NOT RESUSCITATE_

Obviously Clint's not the only one with some issues. He's seen Bruce's file, of course, updated after New York to include 'past suicidal tendencies.' Apparently Nat was witness to something of a scene, but she won't tell Clint about it: too serious for gossip, not vital enough to tell him anyway. But the line in the file is enough for Clint to imagine, along with the medical bracelet and the way Bruce talks (or doesn't talk) about the Hulk.

It feels too personal for a file, though, even if Bruce had realized what he was doing, admitting things in a room full of SHIELD operatives and recording devices. But files tell Clint Bruce's blood type, and where he lived when he was seven, and the number of people he killed during the Harlem incident. Bruce has probably seen Clint's file, in turn, when he was up in the Helicarrier and Clint was a compromised agent they were trying to recover.

Now Clint knows what Bruce looks like when he comes, and that, at least, isn't part of SHIELD's intelligence. Best to keep it that way. He's not going to tell Hill about this, though she'd probably be (officially) interested.

Clint's phone buzzes, over with his clothes and low on battery, and he gets his charger out of its pocket in his quiver. He makes sure to keep it on him, ever since his phone died in Tunis and he had to call for reinforcements on a borrowed civilian phone. Nat had ragged him about it for a solid month.

Nat. Clint stares at his phone, then at the Bruce-shaped lump on the bed, then at the phone again.

He doesn't text Nat with any recriminations, because it's not like it helps to be mad at her. She knew that he didn't like what she was doing with Bruce, so she didn't worry him with it when it got more intimate. That makes sense to her, and if Clint thinks about it, it makes sense to him too. No reason to give Tasha a hard time, when no one did anything wrong.

Clint does text her a picture of himself giving a naked thumbs-up, along with something about Bruce doing well, though, because he's not above being passive-aggressive.

He falls asleep before Natasha replies.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes, this chapter: explicit sex, consensual violence/play fighting between partners, arguments involving minor violence, alcohol. Senseless cameos.

Clint half-expects Bruce to be gone by morning, and he's not especially worried when he wakes up and sees that the space in bed where Bruce should be is occupied by a pillow instead, cushioning Clint's outstretched arm. Clint stretches, and uses the bathroom, and complains a bit about absent lovers, but fortunately he doesn't do much of that before he catches sight of Bruce, just outside on the hotel room's balcony, sitting in a patch of sunlight. Clint takes a second to study him, because Bruce has his eyes closed and Clint doesn't have anything better to do.

Bruce is wearing shorts and no shirt, sitting cross-legged with his hands palms-up on his knees. Classic meditation pose. His posture isn't great, the way he hunches over his lap, and he's listening to an iPod, but the pose is still nice. Calm. Restful. Clint steps in front of him and sits down, knees nearly touching Bruce's.

He can hear the music filtering out of Bruce's headphones, tinny death metal with a heavy drum beat that Bruce's breathing doesn't quite match.

A song ends and Bruce cracks open an eye.

"I thought the secret to hulk-control was being angry," says Clint. "Not Zen."

"There can be more than one secret," says Bruce. "And floating on a sea of anger is pretty Zen, right? That sounds like something Bodhidharma would say."

Clint filters through that for something he understands, decides he doesn't care, and then leans forward to kiss Bruce. Another song starts and Bruce yanks out his headphones, tossing them away and moving further into Clint's space.

It's a good way to spend a lazy morning, making out and eventually listening to Bruce talk about Bodhidharma, but Clint has to report to SHIELD eventually. Fury probably wants to know why he stole a Doomjet, in the least covert spy mission ever. There is probably an international incident happening as they sit here, Bruce's hands on Clint's shoulders. There are probably ten international incidents happening.

But that's later.

"Hey," Clint whispers into Bruce's ear. "We made it to India."

Bruce grins, and it is so much brighter than the little half-smile he usually wears. "Wait until I tell Natasha."

" _You_ tell Natasha?" says Clint. " _I'm_ going to tell Natasha. I'm the one with a working phone."

"Your phone? It was beeping when I woke up this morning, so I took it," says Bruce, the sneak-thief. "And it's not in my back pocket, so you can stop checking there."

"That's not why I had my hand in your pocket," protests Clint, patting down Bruce's front pockets instead.

"Mister Barton," says Bruce, warm and teasing, "we're in public."

"We're on a balcony," says Clint. "Give me my phone, asshole."

"Language," says Bruce, and produces the phone from underneath his leg. Clint grabs for it and Bruce tugs it away, but Clint is a highly-trained superspy, and anyway Bruce isn't trying that hard. Soon the phone is in Clint's hands, where it belongs.

The text message icon is blinking, but Clint ignores it for the moment, since he's not sure how private it is. And then Bruce manages to get the phone away from him again, and Clint laughs and lets him. He doesn't want to push Bruce, not when they're having such a good morning.

Bruce kisses his cheek, some kind of reward, and Clint turns his head and makes it a proper kiss. It takes Bruce a few minutes to break away.

"We're getting distracted," he pants.

"You're getting distracted," says Clint. "Maybe you should let me make the call - you sound like you're out of breath."

Bruce shakes his head and starts paging through Clint's address book. "Why don't you have Natasha's number in here?"

"Oh, give me that," says Clint. "It's under Eleanor. Obviously."

The look Bruce gives him sets Clint to laughing again, and Bruce plucks the phone out of his hands and hits dial, then the speaker button.

The phone rings and ring, and they have to leave a message, but it takes them three tries before they can stop squabbling and laughing long enough to make the recording. Later, Clint can't remember what exactly they said, but he remembers the feel of it - warm and happy and no bitterness in it at all.

The grin on Clint's face lasts through goodbyes and a taxi ride back to the airport. He finally remembers to check his texts as he waits for air control to clear him for take-off.

**NR: u see his tattoo**

**CB: The physics tramp stamp? Classy, right?**

**NR: yes  
got ur message  
glad ur hvn fun**

Then Clint's cleared to fly and he sets his phone into airplane mode, just in case there really is anything to the whole electromagnetic interference thing. He makes a note to ask Bruce what his tattoo means, next time he sees him. And to ask Nat what this whole damn thing means, next time he sees _her_.

\---

Clint lands okay on the Helicarrier, has a very loud fight with Director Fury (on Fury's part - Clint stands there and takes it, because he probably deserves it), and finally has a very quiet debriefing with Agent Hill.

"It's good work," she confides, at the end of it.

"Don't let Fury hear you say that," says Clint, studying his fingernails. "He'd probably burst the other eyeball."

"No, I mean it." Hill shuffles papers back into the stack of files she carries with her - SHIELD's not paperless anymore, not since Loki and Clint broke into the Helicarrier computers.

Clint doesn't remember designing the arrow that plugged into the computer ports and fucked everything up, but it was gorgeous work. Maybe it wasn't him, but some scientist or technician that Loki had 'recruited.' Clint saw the arrow afterwards, anyway, when they were trying to clean up the Helicarrier, and he's incorporated the payload release method into some other trick arrows. At least something worthwhile came out of the whole fiasco in New York.

"-attention, Barton?"

Clint jerks, and scrubs at his eyes. "Uh, no, sorry, Ma'am. Little tired, kind of drifting."

"Stay focused, I'm trying to compliment you." Hill's lips quirk. "You got the book, you got Doctor Banner out of a dangerous situation, and you got a Doomjet for R and D to play with. And Doom can't even complain, since he was holding one of America's most wanted against his will. We've got mutually assured diplomatic destruction."

"I'm so glad," says Clint, and he knows his grin probably undermines any potential sarcasm. 

"Go get some rest, Barton." Hill ushers him out of the debriefing room. "You look like you could use it."

Clint does, stumbling to his room, leaving his bow and quiver next to his bed and face-planting into his pillow. The adrenaline rush had carried him through Doomstadt and over to Kolkata, and then sleeping with Bruce had trumped any thoughts of _actually_ sleeping for very long. Now, though, Clint understands what Bruce had meant about sheets and their awesomeness.

\---

Clint wakes up at five am, because his body hates him and wants him to suffer. He fumbles for his phone, and realizes he'd never switched it back into normal mode after the plane. He does, and regrets it immediately.

Thirty-five missed calls, and none of them from Natasha. No one else should even have this number, unless Clint's brother is actually calling for once in his life.

While Clint is thinking about that, his phone starts buzzing. Some number out of NYC.

Only one way to find out who it is. Besides a reverse look-up, anyway. Clint considers it, but it's more convenient to just answer the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey, if it isn't my favorite guy with a bow. You sound terrible."

"Stark." Clint can barely hear him over the sound of welding and metal in the background. "What are you doing, working this early? What are you doing, _calling_ this early?"

"Is it early? JARVIS, what time is it?"

The music and the welding pause. A British voice that Clint knows belongs to Stark's pet AI says "it is four am local time, Sir, and five am at the Helicarrier's current position."

"Ooh, sorry about that," says Stark, brightly, as the welding and the music begin again. "I lose track of time when I'm not sleeping."

"I don't," growls Clint. "I'm not sleeping right now, and believe me, I can feel every second of it."

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the nest," says Stark.

Clint would apologize, because it's not Stark's fault that he's awake, but come on. This is Tony Stark: most annoying man on the planet, and proud of it. If Clint apologized, it would probably only make Stark feel unloved.

"Are you tracking the Helicarrier?" Clint asks, instead.

"Ask me a more interesting question," says Stark. "Of _course_ I'm tracking the Helicarrier."

"Okay, fine," says Clint. "Did Nat give you this number?"

"Not so much _gave_ as carelessly left her phone around where I could hack into the address book." Stark runs through the explanation fast, and then slows down for the part he actually called for: "So, I hear you've seen Bruce."

"Yes." Clint struggles up and out of bed - he needs coffee to make it through the rest of this conversation. "That all you wanted to know?"

"I want to know _everything_ , Clinty. No, that sounds terrible. Clinterton? Clintlock? What is Clint short for, anyway?"

"It just says Clint on my birth certificate." Well, it might. Clint's never seen his birth certificate.

"Where's Bruce?" asks Stark. His voice sounds different when he actually cares about what he's saying.

"Don't know if I should tell you," says Clint. He tries to set up the coffee maker one-handed. 

"Give me a break, Barton, I just want to know if the guy's okay." The welding and the music stop. "We didn't exactly leave each other on the best of terms. Or any terms."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Clint stares at the coffee machine, willing it to be warm enough to start.

"Bruce left in the middle of the day, while I was asleep. Not a word to anybody." Stark doesn't sound too mad about it, but it's been a few months since Bruce was in New York. Maybe Stark doesn't hold grudges. Or maybe he's just good at hiding them.

"He does that," says Clint. The coffee is finally dripping into the pot. "I don't think I've seen him in the same country more than once."

"So you've seen him often," says Stark. "And so has Natasha, from what she deigned to tell me. Why is Bruce getting so chummy with SHIELD's spy kids, when he won't talk to me?"

"Ask him yourself," says Clint. Talking to Stark is actually waking him up, like Stark is vibrating caffeine across the phone connection.

"I _would_ , if he had left a _number_ ," snarls Stark, and that's about when Clint decides to stop playing games with him.

"Look, you want to know how Banner is? He's doing great. He looks good, way better than he did a couple months ago." The pot's done. Clint finds a mug and pours. "He doesn't have a phone, so far as I know, and if he did I would have to ask him before giving you his number. Or his location. But he is a-okay, and I'm sure he would think it's sweet that you're so worried."

There's a long pause. Long for Stark, anyway, a couple of seconds.

"You're having sex with him," says Stark, not a question. Clint wonders what it must be like, having such a dirty mind and then being _right_.

"Fuck off, Stark," says Clint. He takes a sip of his coffee and burns his tongue. Milk. This needs milk.

"That's exactly what the lovely Miss Romanoff said." Stark sounds sly, like this should be news to Clint, that Nat is sleeping with Banner too. Like it should bother him.

The milk in Clint's fridge is still good. The lighter, cooler coffee tastes a lot better.

"I didn't call to listen to you slurping," complains Stark. "We're not close enough for that."

"Sorry," says Clint, and slurps louder. Stark laughs. All of the anger and worry in him seems drained, or at least masked.

"Bruce and the spy kids, huh? Somebody lucked out, and I think it was you and Natasha." Stark pauses, but Clint doesn't think he wants a response. What could Clint say to that? Yes, I feel very lucky to be having sex with your science buddy, although I'm not so sure about the Natasha and Bruce situation? Stark would eat up all of Clint's gossip with a spoon and a shit-eating grin, but Nat would kill him. _Bruce_ would probably kill him.

"Hey," says Stark, breaking into Clint's thoughts. "Tell Bruce to call me, okay?"

Clint thinks about it. "I'll let him know when I see him."

"Good," says Stark. "Anyway, that's why I called, I'll let you get back to espionaging now-"

"Wait," says Clint. "Is Natasha still in New York?"

"Don't know if I should tell you," says Stark, sharp edges digging through his mask before they're gone again. "Oh! Clinton! That's the name I was trying to-"

Clint hangs up, and drinks the rest of his coffee. He has another cup before he calls Natasha.

Nat picks up on the second ring.

"Barton," she says. "I've got three minutes." She sounds a little uncertain - Nat never did like audio-only conversations, because you can only read the other person when they're talking. Clint savors that, takes a couple seconds to sip his coffee and keep Nat off-balance.

"Two minutes fifty seconds," says Nat, impatiently.

"What the fuck were you thinking, letting Stark have my number," says Clint, as calm as he can make it, which is not very.

"He thought he was stealing it from me," says Nat, not bothering to deny that she had _let_ Stark have it. "He was worried about Bruce. He was making himself annoying to Pepper."

"He was making himself annoying to me," says Clint. "And now I'm going to have to change my number again-"

"You were going to ditch that burner anyway, you always do."

"-can't believe you let Stark have my number-"

"He needed to talk to you."

"-I mean, seriously, did you actually list me as 'Clint' in your address book, because that's negligence, and-"

"Barton." Nat's voice is sharp, and Clint stops, letting his sentence fragment.

"Sorry," he says.

"I had Stark call you because it's likely that you will see Bruce before I do. I wasn't trying to punish you by forcing you to interact with a civilian." Nat's voice is steady, same as always, but Clint can hear the irony anyway.

"Not just any civilian," mutters Clint. "And I've been in the field, Nat, I haven't been starving for company."

There's a pause, longer than any Stark let by. They must be reaching the end of three minutes, by now.

"Do you want to talk about what's really bothering you?" asks Tasha.

"No," says Clint. "Yes."

Tasha waits for him, not saying anything. Clint breathes, his hand gripped on the counter.

"Not like this," he says, at last. "Not over the phone."

"I agree," says Nat. "It's been too long since we were in a room together."

Clint nods, and he knows that Tasha will understand even if she can't see him. 

"I'll be back in a week," says Tasha. "Just hold out."

"I'll text you my new number," says Clint, and Nat hangs up.

\---

Clint holds out five days, working out, doing bow maintenance, sleeping. The sixth day, he signs some forms and borrows a jet. Agent Hill gives him her approval, and doesn't look surprised when he logs his flight plan as an overnight in Kolkata.

He's got questions for Bruce, after all, and things to tell him.

Clint doesn't have an address for Bruce, and who knows if the guy has bought a cellphone or uses email, but Clint thinks he has a feel for Bruce's habits now. Also a good description of him, and a working knowledge of Bengali. So Clint bypasses the big scientific research centers and walks through the narrow streets of old North Kolkata instead.

Three shop owners, five older people sitting on stoops, and a group of teenagers arguing about money haven't seen a middle-aged white guy with glasses, about Clint's height with curly graying hair. A woman with a baby has, but her guy was obviously a tourist, camera and all, and Clint's pretty sure Bruce wouldn't be hanging around and taking pictures. But a kid playing on the river bank's seen a guy that matches Clint's description, and Clint gives her some change in exchange for directions to the kid's grandmother's house, and the grandmother gives Clint directions to a clinic, where a doctor who's closing up for the day tells Clint that Bruce is making a housecall a few blocks down, which is how Clint ends up on the third floor of a rooming house, standing in the hallway while the landlady knocks on a door.

The door swings open, and Bruce leans out. "Salamwalikum, Musammat Hossain-"

The landlady jerks her head at Clint, and Bruce's eyes slide over to him. Clint waves, feeling a little ridiculous, but Bruce smiles.

"You'd better come inside," he says. "I'm nearly done here."

"Tell me when you're leaving," says the landlady in Urdu, which Clint can just barely follow. She stumps back down the stairs and Bruce ushers Clint inside. There's a young man in bed, there, with his leg propped up and half-wrapped in gauze.

"I'm changing Mehmood's bandages," explains Bruce, then starts talking to Mehmood in Urdu, too fast for Clint. Clint crosses his arms and leans against the wall, focusing on the room's window. It looks across the street into another rooming house, giving a clear shot for any snipers who would want to take it.

Clint shakes his head, carefully, dislodging the thought. No snipers here, this is just a friendly visit. He must just be nervous.

Bruce pats Mehmood's leg and stands up, waving goodbye. Clint waves too, and then Bruce pushes a toolbox into his other hand.

"Carry that for me?" asks Bruce. His hands are occupied with wrapping spare gauze into a ball, and Clint shrugs and leads the way down the stairs.

"I came to visit," he says, though it's kind of obvious. "Make sure you were settling in okay."

"It's fine so far," says Bruce, and then stops to tell the landlady goodbye before they step out onto the street. He takes a moment to breathe, eyes closed, before picking up the conversation again as they walk. "You found me pretty easily."

"You don't make yourself difficult to find," points out Clint. "If you're not hiding, I feel like I should point outlet you know about a bunch of nuclear physicists in Kolkata who would probably like to meet you." 

Bruce takes the toolbox away from him, puts the gauze in its place. "Right, the Saha Institute. Did you check there first?"

"No," says Clint, and follows as Bruce starts walking. It's a nice day, fading into dusk, and there are suddenly a lot more people outside, laughing and talking and making the streets narrow.

"I'm not really ready for the scientific community," says Bruce, quiet enough that it's almost lost in the conversations of strangers. "Not even if SHIELD is protecting me."

"Sure, okay," says Clint. "But you realize you're not a medical doctor, right?"

Bruce smiles. "I'm just trying to help. Kolkata has above-average healthcare, out of the big Indian cities, but the public hospitals are slow and crowded, and the private hospitals are too expensive for a lot of people." He looks over at Clint, like he's checking to make sure Clint is still with him. "That's true everywhere, though. Not just in Kolkata."

Clint nods, remembering a childhood of waiting three weeks to see any doctor, just in case it got better on its own, and then skipping out on the emergency room bill. But he still feels skeptical. "And you can help with your PhD in physics?"

"No," admits Bruce. "But there's a local practice in the neighborhood that could use extra hands, just to check up on patients and report on new cases. I know enough to assist."

Light dawns, and Clint grins. "You're a murse."

"Male nurse," says Bruce, and turns down an alleyway. "Or better yet, just call me a regular nurse, although I guess I don't really have a nursing degree either-"

"Murse," says Clint, again, and then pats Bruce's back when Bruce glares at him "Aw, come on, I just like the way it sounds. Hey, where we going?"

"I'm off for the night," says Bruce. "We could get food, or walk around, or-"

"Go back to your place," supplies Clint, and he's gratified to see Bruce's pace quicken just a little, and his direction stay steady. They were already headed to Bruce's place.

Bruce is living in a basement room, tiny and a bit dark, but it has its own entrance, which Clint counts as a definite plus. The room reminds him of Bruce's basement in Sevastopol, that dank room with the much-needed towels. Bruce seems drawn to the lowest levels of buildings, and Clint isn't sure if he should ask Bruce why.

"Something on your mind?" asks Bruce, and Clint almost laughs. There are so many things on his mind - questions about the whole Natasha-Bruce-Clint triangle, remembering that he needs to tell Bruce about Tony Stark, the fact that he would really like to kiss Bruce right now, and push his fingers up Bruce's shirt-

"Clint?"

"What does your tattoo mean?" asks Clint, almost at random.

Bruce flicks his eyes up to Clint's and then down. His cheeks don't go red and his half-smile stays steady, but, yeah, he's embarrassed. 

"Means people do stupid things when they're twenty-four and getting their PhD."

Bruce won't say anything else about it, so Clint makes like he's forgotten, and an hour later, when Bruce is on his back on his tiny bed and his dick is in Clint's mouth and Bruce is arching up and up, as far as he can go with Clint's hands pushing down on his hips, Clint pulls off and says "Hey, what does your tattoo mean?"

"Oh my god, you're going to kill me." Bruce's fists clench in his sheets, and Clint just watches, admiring the tension in his body.

"Nope," says Clint. "But you don't get off until you tell me the whole story."

"Fuck," says Bruce. His eyes open, and Clint licks his lips. Bruce's eyes slam shut again. "It's a Feynman diagram. Do you want me to explain the whole thing?"

"Just the basics," says Clint. "Or, you can do the whole thing, but I'd just be watching your mouth move."

Bruce actually laughs. Clint thinks that's a pretty great trick, and he'd love to do it again.

"Rather watch your mouth move," says Bruce, and Clint can see why, so he slides his mouth back over Bruce's dick, listens to Bruce choke. When Bruce doesn't say anything else, Clint stops sucking and snaps his fingers.

"Right, yeah, sorry," mumbles Banner. "Uh. It just shows a strong interaction between protons and neutrons. Clint, Clint, I'm really close."

Clint pulls off and starts stroking Bruce's dick instead, watching his face. "Keep going. What's a strong interaction do?"

Bruce opens his glassy eyes and talks to the ceiling, fast and breathy. "We're still not one hundred percent on how it works, but it creates nuclear force." Clint twists his fingers and Bruce comes with a little gasp. "That's what holds the world together," says Bruce, to the ceiling.

"Huh," says Clint. He traces sticky fingers along the curve of Bruce's stomach, listens to Bruce's breathing smooth, rhythm reestablishing itself. "Doesn't sound stupid to me."

"No." Bruce's lips quirk, but Clint's not going to get another laugh out of him tonight. "No, the stupid part is that I just did it because I thought Feynman himself was hot, but I knew enough not to get his face tattooed on me."

"Shame," says Clint. His eyelids start to drift closed. He didn't sleep much in the five days before he flew over here. He yawns, and tries to talk through it. "I could tease you about it more."

"You can't fall asleep like this," says Bruce.

"We'll see about that," mutters Clint, and Bruce chuckles, gets up. He's back in a minute, with a wet cloth that cleans Clint's fingers and wrist. He helps take off Clint's pants, too, before he lays down again. Clint takes advantage and settles his forehead against Bruce's shoulder.

"You know," says Bruce, when Clint's almost fallen asleep, "when Natasha wanted to know about my tattoo, she just kept telling me embarrassing stories until I felt like I owed her something."

"That's her tactic," says Clint. This position isn't comfortable, and he rolls on his other side, away from Bruce. "You like mine better?"

"I don't think I should answer that," says Bruce. "That kind of question doesn't have a right answer."

Clint grunts, because it's true. He can feel Bruce's hand on his hip and he settles back into him. "Any of the embarrassing stories about me?"

"I don't think I should answer that either," says Bruce, and Clint can feel his smile against the back of his neck, which means _yes_.

Clint knows he loves them, both of them, because he doesn't mind. What a scary thought. He wonders how far Nat could go, before he started minding. How far Bruce could go.

He doesn't want to ask any more questions about Natasha.

"Tony Stark wants you to call him," says Clint. "I'll give you his number before I go."

There's a long pause, and Clint twists around to see that Bruce has fallen asleep.

He's still asleep in the morning and Clint has a meeting to make, so he writes Stark's number on a piece of scrap paper, and leaves it on his side of Bruce's bed. He ruffles Bruce's hair before he goes.

\---

Nat is in Clint's room when he gets back to the Helicarrier, sitting on his bed in shorts and a t-shirt and flipping through his archery magazines.

"Do you ever get anything out of these?" she asks, when Clint opens the door.

"Someday I'm going to retire from government work and win a fistful of medals," says Clint. "Got to keep up on the civilian competition until then." He keeps his face straight, but he's grinning on the inside. Forget petty annoyances and that Bruce guy, this is _Tasha_ , and it's been _months_. Clint sets down his travel duffel and spreads his arms. Nat rolls her eyes, but she gets up and stands there while Clint hugs her, her arms coming up to pat Clint's back stiffly. Clint gives her one last squeeze and lets her go, because Nat doesn't exactly _mind_ hugs but it doesn't make sense to push his luck.

"How are you doing?" asks Tasha. She's been letting her hair grow, and it's down past her shoulders now. Marking time spent apart.

"Okay, more or less," says Clint. "I know I've been a little touchy-"

Tasha shrugs. "We don't do long-distance well. It wasn't a surprise."

It shouldn't have been, anyway. Clint and Natasha work well together as long as they're _together_ , but kept apart and trying to keep in touch, they get on each other's nerves. Clint's spent years memorizing every twitch of Natasha's face, but she defaults back to inscrutable when he can't see her and catalogue her tiny reactions. Tasha's complained about the same problem with him, though Clint thinks he isn't anywhere near as difficult.

"I really missed you," says Clint, still standing in Tasha's space, and she leans up and kisses him, fingers digging into his arms, like she's making sure he's still there. He'll have bruises, tomorrow.

Then Nat sweeps his legs out from under him and they go down together. Clint does a perfect fall except for the part where Nat lands an elbow in his side, and then they're wrestling through his bedroom, dirty fighting with knees and biting and pulling hair, occasional time outs for kissing that still involves most of the dirty fighting tactics. 

"You've been too much in your own head," says Tasha, when they roll to a stop. She's on top of Clint, arm over his throat.

"Maybe so," says Clint, and flips them, nearly getting a thumb in his eye for his trouble. Now Nat is pinned underneath him and he'll have bruises _everywhere_ tomorrow and he feels more alive than he has in months.

Nat knees him in stomach, and Clint stops thinking altogether, just feels. Feels pain, at the moment, but there's a joy in it, and he laughs and Tasha smiles.

When they're too tired to playfight anymore, Tasha drags herself back up onto Clint's bed, and Clint grabs some repair work he's been meaning to get to before he joins her. He's wired on adrenaline, now, and he needs something to do with his hands.

Nat watches him as he works, and for a while everything is quiet except for the sound of Clint's tools. Clint can feel her eyes on his back and then the rest of Natasha on his back as she molds herself into him while he finishes checking his back-up quiver. Some of the arrow shafts broke during the last mission he used it in, and he makes a note to talk to some tech guy about that. This is supposed to be cutting edge stuff, and he's sure Stark could get him unbreakable shafts. Adamantium, or something. He says as much to Tasha.

"Your quiver was run over by a steamroller," she says.

"Besides the point," says Clint. "But I'm glad that someone read my report."

"I'm sure Agent Hill reads every one of your reports," says Tasha, teasing. "Though she may have noticed some judicious editing in the last one."

"I just cut off the end of the Latveria report," says Clint. "I don't think SHIELD needs to know what happened after we landed in Kolkata."

The quiver is a lost cause. Clint should start talking to the tech guys about building a new one, maybe with a stronger support structure this time-

"I like him," says Natasha, without apparently feeling the need to specify her pronouns.

"Are we talking about Bruce now?" Clint rolls his shoulders, and Nat obligingly backs off, lets him stand. "Because I need a drink before we start that."

"You're being touchy again." Tasha follows him into the kitchen, watches as Clint gets the Kraken off the shelf. "I don't understand your problem with Bruce."

Clint appreciates the way she says that, not defensive or accusing, just puzzled. He appreciates it so much that he gets Nat her own shot glass, sets it next to his on the kitchen counter.

"I just don't get what we're doing," says Clint. "Any of us."

He pours for both of them, watching Nat roll that over in her head.

"We've had sex with the same person before," she says. "Yelena Belova. Clay Quartermain."

"Yeah, and Yelena tried to kill you and Quartermain was a raging asshole." Clint raises his shot, and Nat clinks glasses with him. "Prost."

"Prost," says Natasha, and they tip their heads back. The rum slides down Clint's throat, and he clacks the shot back on the table.

"You'll excuse me for being cautious," he says. "Especially since I've never shared a lover who could turn green and destroy everything around him if he got too jealous."

Tasha actually winces, and Clint closes his eyes.

"Bruce wouldn't do that," she says.

"No," agrees Clint. "But you're still scared that he will, and I don't think that it's right." Tasha doesn't say anything, so Clint has to open his eyes and clarify, even though he knows she won't like it. "I just don't think he'd appreciate being used for your therapy."

Tasha goes blank at that, and Clint counts to five and does another shot before she takes the rum away from him and pours her own shot. Clint watches the graceful curve of her throat as she swallows, the curl of her fingers as she wipes her mouth.

"Wouldn't he?" asks Tasha.

"Not appreciate," says Clint. "Tolerate, I guess, since that's what he's doing now."

Nat eyes him as she pours two more shots. "You're using him too," she points out. "Trying to connect to me."

Clint grabs his shot and drinks it, keeps himself from saying anything stupid. This is why he and Nat shouldn't fight: because they know too much about each other, because they cut each other on their broken edges, because they never try to soften a blow. But they fight _because_ they know too much about each other, and they can't help trying to fix what's broken, can't help telling each other what they think.

"He's a nice guy," Clint says, sets the glass down, wipes his mouth. It doesn't look as pretty as when Tasha does it.

"Yes," says Nat, and does her own shot.

"Too nice for us," says Clint, and reaches for the bottle. Nat grabs his wrist, and pushes the bottle away.

"No," she says.

Clint watches as Natasha moves through the kitchen, and he can tell that she's thinking as she mixes a new drink. Glass from the cupboard, ice from the freezer, then a slosh of vodka and kahlua.

"The milk in the fridge is probably still okay," says Clint, and Natasha checks to make sure before she pours any in. She stirs, slowly, and Clint comes around to stand behind her, molding himself to her back.

Natasha makes White Russians when she's drinking and tired, movements mechanical like it's something she learned so long ago that the motions are independent of her brain. Clint's taken her to bars and seen her jump the counter to make her own White Russian, but she likes making them at home better, with the expensive Russian vodka that Clint buys for her.

He'd made fun of her the first time she drank it with him, because it's a bad stereotype, the drink wasn't even invented in Russia. Now Clint just reaches over and takes a sip from Natasha's glass, setting it back down in front of her when he's done with about three-quarters of it still there. Nat elbows him and drinks a quarter of it herself.

"You think we'd be good for each other," he says, into her ear.

"We're not good for anyone," corrects Natasha. "I think we'd _work_."

Clint laughs, starts with a chuckle and then can't stop it, even when he knows he sounds hysterical.

"How the hell," he chokes out, forces past the laughter, "is adding _yet another_ unstable variable to this _mess_ going to make _anything_ work?"

Nat pushes Clint off, turns to face him. She sips her White Russian thoughtfully, and then slaps Clint across the face.

It's barely even a hit, not as hard as anything they threw at each other in play, earlier. But it still stops the laughter and the despair.

"I'm done talking about this," says Nat, and tosses back the rest of her drink. "You're obviously not to be reasoned with."

"Yeah, I'm the unreasonable one here," mutters Clint, and he's not sure whether he's actually being sarcastic.

"We're scheduled for a mission together." Nat throws it over her shoulder as she walks out the door.

"Where to?" asks Clint. His jaw hurts where she slapped him, as ridiculous as that is.

"Kolkata."

"I just came from there!" shouts Clint, after her, but Nat doesn't look like she's stopping, so he grabs his travel duffle from where he left it on the floor and hurries after her. "You can't just go to Bruce and tell him to fix this."

"We are going to warn Doctor Banner about the high probability that Victor von Doom has established his approximate location." Nat's voice is clipped, like she's reading from a briefing, and her eyes stare straight ahead.

"Bullshit," growls Clint. "Is this a real mission? Did you-" Nat isn't responding, but Clint spots Hill in the halls and switches targets. "Hey, Agent Hill! Is this," he gestures at himself and Natasha, " _authorized_ , or-"

"You're all clear," says Hill, and buries her nose in a file, which does not answer Clint's question at all.

"Do you want to fly or should I?" asks Nat.

"Neither of us is sober enough for that," says Clint, and that's enough to make Nat stop and consider their respective blood alcohol levels, at least. They're fine, done missions more tipsy than this, but neither of them want to get reported to Fury for flying while intoxicated. Nat looks at him, hesitating, and for a moment Clint thinks that they might be able to talk about this again, sort themselves out before they go and dump everything on Bruce.

But then Nat just commandeers a SHIELD trainee to do the flying instead, grabs one right off of the upper deck and pushes her into a jet. Good thing they found a trainee with actual pilot training, though Clint wouldn't be surprised if Nat's memorized every SHIELD agent's face and background.

"I'm sorry about this," says Clint to the trainee. They're over the Philippines now, and Natasha is changing in the back while Clint sits in the cockpit and keeps his eyes forward.

"Are you kidding?" asks the trainee. "I can tell everyone that I went on a mission with Hawkeye and the Black Widow!"

"Look, Agent-" Clint breaks off, waiting for the kid's name. 

"Morse."

"Agent Morse, this isn't a glamorous op. You're just dropping us off at the airport."

"Yeah, but-"

"But she can tell it any way she wants." Tasha leans over Clint's shoulder. She's changed into a long sundress, her hair up in a loose knot. "If they don't believe you, Morse, just tell them to ask me."

"No one would actually ask you," says Morse. She must be older than she looks, because she looks about twelve. "They'd be too scared."

"Exactly." Nat shows all of her teeth. She glances at Clint, inviting him in on the joke, but Clint looks away, back out at the clouds. He can't play nice right now, not even for an audience.

Nat pushes away from his shoulder, goes to sit in back, and Morse shows some tact and doesn't say anything for the rest of the ride.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes, this chapter: lots of arguments, with a brief threat of violence; action scenes involving actual violence and character injury; kissing.

Morse drops Clint and Natasha off and promises to wait for them with the plane in case they need to make a quick getaway - it gives them a good excuse to leave Morse at the airport instead of dragging her into what Nat still insists is a mission and what Clint is pretty sure will be a huge fight. Once Morse is dealt with, Clint and Natasha break into Bruce's room, which is probably going to annoy him, but it's thematic and anyway, it's fun, especially after the awkward silence of the flight over. Natasha sits on Bruce's bed while Clint ignores her and snoops through Bruce's stuff.

There's nothing on the walls, but the chest of drawers next to Bruce's bed has a bunch of drawings that look like they were done by kids, maybe from one of his nursing jobs. Socks, shirts, boring things, and then a notebook full of dense notation and formulas that Clint doesn't understand. Looks impressive, though.

"Running away from the science," mutters Clint. "But the science just won't leave him alone."

Nat shoots him a glance that could mean that she doesn't think much of his observation or just that his observation was incomprehensible. Or both, they're not mutually exclusive. Clint replaces the notebook, just in time for the door to swing open. Clint pushes the drawer shut again and coughs, trying to announce their presence without actually shouting 'it's us! Clint and Natasha!' Now Natasha's glaring at him.

"Hey," calls Bruce. He sets his toolbox at the top of the steps and closes the door. "Both of you at once? Is this about the anniversary?"

Clint freezes and starts counting dates. Six and a half months since he saw Bruce in Sevastopol. About a week since Doomstadt. Who knows how long since Bruce and Tasha hooked up, but he glances over at Tasha and she seems as clueless as Clint is.

"Okay, I guess not," says Bruce, when a couple seconds have gone by and Clint still hasn't come up with an appropriate date. 

"Do you want to enlighten us, Bruce?" asks Nat.

"It's about a year since the last Hulk incident." Bruce brushes his hair back, and doesn't look at either of them. "I'm back to where I was when SHIELD picked me up."

Oh, fuck. Clint can't believe he managed to forget - this means about a year since NYC, about a year since Loki, about a year since Clint got SHIELD agents - men and women on his own side - killed or hurt, about a year since he actually shot at Director Fury.

Dimly, Clint can hear Tasha telling Bruce congratulations, and then she asks Clint if he's all right. Clint says something, but apparently it wasn't satisfactory, because Bruce is right there.

"I'm going to hug you," says Bruce, and Clint pulls a Natasha, just stands there, careful and still, as Bruce pulls him into his arms. Nat comes up behind Clint a moment later, doesn't say anything, just hugs his waist. That, that is what pulls Clint out of it, because Natasha _never_ gives hugs, just takes them.

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, sorry."

"Don't worry about it." Bruce's hands are warm on Clint's back.

"You're not over the Chitauri invasion," says Nat, like it's a revelation, a missing piece of a puzzle.

"No, it's-" begins Clint, but Bruce is looking over Clint's shoulder, eyebrows raised.

" _Obviously_ ," he says. "Have you talked to Clint in the last year? He's so paranoid that it actually hurts me to watch."

"I'm fine," says Clint, and shakes himself free. Nat and Bruce let him go, but their eyes follow him.

"I can understand a bit more cautiousness around you, Bruce," says Nat, like she's testing out a theory. "We all saw the Hulk at New York, what he can do-"

"I'm not scared of Bruce," says Clint.

"You shouldn't be," agrees Nat, all ready to preach the gospel of the recently converted. Clint scowls at her.

"No one said you were scared," says Bruce, and that's true, but Nat tried pretty hard to imply it.

There's a pause. Bruce sits down on his bed, mumbling something about working all day and being tired, but Clint and Nat stay standing, while Clint thinks of what to say next.

"I don't treat you any differently than I treat anyone else," tries Clint, and Nat snorts but Bruce says "That's what I'm worried about," and Clint's attention snaps to him.

"It would be exhausting to be as careful with everyone as you are with me," continues Bruce, and his voice is calm and steady, but his eyes are fixed on Clint's and Bruce doesn't do that, doesn't look someone in the eyes for that long. "And you are _so_ careful around me. You think I haven't noticed, Clint? The way you keep in my line of sight, the way you warn me before you do anything, the way you don't touch me unless I'm practically already in your lap? And even then, you ask."

"Nothing wrong with sincere consent," mutters Clint. "Thought you'd appreciate that."

"No, I do," acknowledges Bruce. "But I think it's part of a pattern. Look at the way you act in crowds, in unfamiliar spaces, in-"

"It's not like you," says Tasha. "You're reckless, and tactless, and headstrong, Clint." Clint almost manages a smile at that, because she says it fondly instead of despairingly, but there's worry in Tasha's eyes.

"You're still a little reckless." Bruce's half-smile tries to stage a comeback as well, and it works better than Clint's, but it still looks kind of shaky. "Doomstadt was pretty high risk for you. And you've never asked me anything about the other guy, even when you probably needed to know."

" _That's_ not like you either, not getting information." Nat's eyes are wide and her mouth is thin, looking at Clint like she's trying to assess what else is missing. "People have tried and failed to change you before, so why change now?"

Clint rolls that around in his brain, and he doesn't like any of the things it dislodges. 

"Okay, maybe I am scared!" says Clint, because he is, just now. "Can you blame me?"

"No," says Bruce, and he sounds resigned, but understanding.

"Yes," says Nat, and she sounds angry. Clint rounds on her.

" _You_ don't want me to be scared because then you have to admit that sometimes people are afraid of things and it's fine! You've got the unhealthiest fucking attitude toward your own anxieties that I've ever seen, and believe me, I've _seen_ unhealthy-"

Nat throws a punch, but she's angry enough that Clint can see it coming, move out of the way. She doesn't try another one, just looks over at the bed where Bruce is sitting, eyes squeezed shut and hands tight on the mattress, like he's motion-sick.

"Wild punches aside," says Clint, and his breath comes out in shudders, and Bruce looks up. "Nat could kill me anytime she wanted. It's not like you're special, Banner."

"I won't," says Natasha. "Not here. Not you."

Clint's shoulders sag, and he reminds himself that he _likes_ these people. "I know you won't, Tasha-"

"Don't _do_ that," snarls Natasha.

Clint snaps back, feeling like Nat landed that punch after all. "Don't do what?"

"The _names_." Natasha tips her chin up. "I'm tired of trying to figure out who I'm supposed to be, _Barton_."

Clint chokes on her hypocrisy, chokes and sputters with it, until Bruce's hand is on his back and Bruce's arm is around Natasha's shoulders, and Clint doesn't relax into it, but Bruce is a steadying influence all the same.

"You call me Nat when you respect me, and you call me Tasha when I do something you like," says Natasha. "And-"

"You don't understand," snaps Clint. "You don't understand why-"

"I think," says Bruce, deathly calm, "that we're getting a little too worked up."

"Fuck you, Banner," says Clint, and his voice feels raw and bleeding. Natasha grimaces at the sound. "Some of us can have an argument without turning into green wrecking balls."

"You _are_ scared of the Hulk," says Natasha, and she sounds triumphant. Clint hates her for that, just a little bit.

"No, he's not," says Bruce. "Or, look, I'm not going to dictate your problems to you. But Natasha, I think you're projecting. And I think Clint is just a little anxious right now. Generally, I mean, not just around me."

There's a pause. Natasha shakes off Bruce's arm, and Clint steps away from his hand. Bruce shrugs, and sticks his hands in his pockets, looking down.

"I'm guessing," he says, to his feet. "I don't have much of a frame of reference for how Clint acts when he's not around me."

Natasha moves, and Clint looks away from Bruce and meets her eyes. She's checking her fingernails, like she might find some empathy underneath them.

"You still leveling out after Loki?" she asks. "Counselors make a mistake, putting you back on mission duty so early?"

"I'm fine," says Clint, again, which is probably undercut by the way his hands trembled when Natasha said 'Loki.' Clint can tell Bruce noticed, from the concerned expression that crosses his face. And of course Natasha noticed, she notices everything when she's there to see it, the whole problem is that she hasn't been around to see him-

Clint's jaw clenches. This is bullshit. They are adults, they should be able to handle their problems on their own. That means no recriminations, no expecting anyone else to pick up your burden.

"You've never been compromised like that before," says Natasha, and it feels like she's interrupting Clint even though he doesn't have anything else to say. "Everyone would understand if you needed time to-"

"To get your head together," finishes Bruce, when Natasha runs out of words. 

"Don't either of you say anything about my mental health." Clint tries to match Bruce's tone, calm and reasoned, but his voice breaks into shards, meant to cut. "I'm not the one who thinks that sleeping with someone will make him less of a threat. I'm not the one who thinks that being in India will somehow solve my problems."

"What else, then?" asks Natasha, like she expects an answer. "How am I supposed to make Bruce less of a threat, other than getting to know him? How is Bruce supposed to solve his problems, other than being somewhere that makes him happy?"

Clint doesn't know, but that doesn't mean this makes any sense. He sets his jaw again. It aches, and he wonders if he has bruises there or if he just hurts from arguing.

"It's all stop-gap measures," says Banner, quietly. "That's all we've got left, stop-gap measures. You're right, and it's terrible," and his lips quirk and Clint wants to rip that tiny half-smile off of his face, wants to kiss it and make Bruce laugh, "but Natasha's also right. What else are we supposed to do?"

Clint is going to say something antagonistic, and ruin everything, or he's going to say something needy and make Natasha _look_ at him, and really it's all for the best that this is when the Doombots attack.

"Oh my god," says Bruce, when the first metal fist punches through his wall.

"Oh, right," says Clint. "This is what we were here to warn you about."

\---

There are dozens of Doombots on the street, ignoring the fleeing civilians as they fire at Clint, Natasha and Bruce.

Clint and Natasha are firing back, of course. Clint had his bow and quiver in his travel duffel, and Natasha had no less than three guns under her sundress - Clint has _undressed_ her after missions, and he still doesn't know how she does it. But he's glad that she does, because watching Natasha take out Doombots is a delight, every shot another broken pile of machinery. Clint tries to match her, robot for robot.

Bruce is huddled behind the remains of his wall, apparently concentrating very hard on not turning into a big green wrecking ball.

"Maybe you should just let go," says Clint, because more Doombots are landing all the time, and he's only got so many explosive arrowheads. He fires one, waits for the blast, and that makes three arrowheads left, and twenty more Doombots to replace the six that he just destroyed. This is probably why it took Doom about a week to launch any reprisals on Bruce - he had to build his army.

"Civilians," says Bruce.

"They've all run away," says Clint. "Smart people. I should try that sometime."

Bruce shakes his head, and Natasha shouts at Clint to stop talking and pay attention, and there go two more explosive arrows, into the growing mob of metal men, and one regular arrow into the eyesocket of the 'bot that was about to fire at Natasha.

Too bad Clint didn't see the one that was aiming at him.

The ray gun blast knocks Clint off his feet and burns his left arm, but he rolls with it and fires his last explosive arrow into the 'bots.

"Boom," he says, which is a good sound, but the rest of the sounds are bad: Natasha's last gun clicking on empty, the clack of boots as more Doombots land. They are royally screwed.

Bruce gets up from behind his shelter.

He looks over Clint, and Clint just shouts at him to _change_ , already, because the number of Doombots can currently be calculated as a _fuck ton_. And then Bruce looks over at Natasha, and Clint's heart sinks, because she's going to say no and then Bruce will tear himself apart no matter what happens, caught in the choice between scaring Natasha and saving everyone from the killer robots. And Clint couldn't blame him, because he doesn't know which he would choose either.

Natasha kicks a Doombot's head clean off its shoulders, and then looks at the fifty or so more that are moving to replace it. And she nods.

Bruce changes, and then the rest of the fight is a blur of green and trying to dodge flying robot parts. Clint laughs, just once, when a green cape from a Doombot hits Natasha in the face, and she tears it off and manages a smile.

Clint could swear he saw the Hulk grinning, though maybe that was just a reaction to the smashing.

\---

Bruce wakes up slow, with his head in Clint's lap and his feet across Natasha's legs, naked except for the blanket Natasha scrounged from a busted-up shop. They're sitting together in a somewhat structurally unsound building, and Clint is just waiting for the sirens, waiting for the stomp of boots and then he'll have to explain this to the police, he's already going to have to explain it to Fury, and-

"Calm down," say Natasha and Bruce, together. Natasha's voice is sharp and Bruce's voice is soft, but the concern in their eyes is exactly the same.

Clint's shoulders drop, inch by inch. He hadn't realized how tense they'd gotten.

He's been doing that a lot, lately. Winding himself up without realizing it, and _god_ , he'd never noticed all the space he'd been giving to Bruce, how much space he was giving everyone, because he's paranoid but not that paranoid.

"I skipped out of post-mission counseling early," Clint says.

"I noticed," says Natasha, cool and dry, but her hand is warm on the back of Clint's neck.

"Recognizing the problem is a good first step," says Bruce. His eyes are almost shut, and he misses the first time he tries to pat Clint's unburned arm. Gets it the second time, though. "My problem is that I'm in public and I don't have any pants."

"We got you a blanket," says Natasha. Her sundress is torn and her voice holds no sympathy. "What else do you want?"

Bruce beams at her. Clint almost laughs - guy gets loopy, after de-hulking. "Lots of things," says Bruce. "But this is good for now."

"We should move," says Clint, because paranoia or not, some kind of authority is going to show up soon. "Is there a safehouse around here?"

"Five blocks," says Natasha, and pushes Bruce's feet off of her, stands up. She helps Bruce up next, and Bruce wraps the blanket around himself, like some kind of toga or sarong except infinitely more awkward. "Try to look as helpless as possible, Bruce, and everyone will just think you got injured during the incident."

"No problem," says Bruce, slumping, and Clint catches one of his arms, swings it over his shoulder. "I'm exhausted."

"I can understand that," says Clint, as they move out of the basement and into the dusty, broken street. "The H-" Clint stops himself, remembers that people don't appreciate being called by coded names, starts over. "I mean, you took out a lot of those Doombots."

Bruce blinks, staring at the ground like he's processing, or maybe just thinking about where he should put his feet. "You can call the other guy the Hulk," he says, finally. "We're not- I don't think we're the same person." He stumbles over something, and Natasha steadies his other side.

"Watch the severed robot heads," she says. "We need to find shoes for you."

"Yeah," says Bruce, eyes tracking the ground now. "Did the other guy do this?"

Clint glances around the block. It looks rough, now that everything is silent and there isn't any adrenaline to keep his focus on the things trying to kill him.

"Busted buildings are mostly the Doombots' fault," he says. The Hulk took out one or two walls, but the Doombots can take the blame for those, too. "The whole robots that are down are from me and Natasha, and the ones torn into pieces and thrown all around are from the Hulk."

"I'm going to have to move," says Bruce, infinitely sad. "And the other people who lived here-"

"No one was seriously injured," says Natasha. "And I told a few people who came to check on their houses that Victor Von Doom and SHIELD will pay a hefty finder's fee for any Doombot parts they get. Between those two, the area should be rebuilt soon enough."

Bruce smiles, and Clint gives into an urge and ruffles his hair. Natasha reaches up to do the same, and their hands meet and tangle together before Bruce stumbles again and they let go, sacrificing sweetness for stability.

"You might want to move to the other side of town anyway," admits Natasha. "I'm not sure if anyone saw you change."

"Yeah, about that," says Clint. "Sorry we broke your record." He tries to be flippant, but he _does_ feel responsible - like he and Natasha should have been enough, should have been able to take on Doom without making Bruce fight.

"That doesn't count as a real incident," says Bruce. "I let the other guy out on purpose, not because my control slipped, not because of a mistake."

"You let him out in New York on purpose," points out Clint.

"I was counting from the Helicarrier," says Bruce, and they all stop for a second.

Clint doesn't remember the incident in the Helicarrier, just felt the bruises on his head afterwards. But he remembers the videos, Natasha running from the Hulk and Clint moving with someone else pulling his strings. He breathes, shakes the secondhand memory off. Bruce's eyes are still far away when Clint looks over, but Natasha is moving again, tugging them both forward.

"One more block to go," she says, and Clint can only just hear the catch in her voice that comes with her own firsthand memories.

They're all still a little fucked up, but if it made Clint mad an hour ago, it comforts him now. They're fucked up, but they're fucked up together. They can't fill each other's broken places, but they can make it work, get each other help, make allowances, _live_. And Clint can try and find out about Coulson, where he is, alive or dead; find out all the things that he was scared of learning because he didn't really want to know-

"I should call Tony," says Bruce, out of nowhere. "There's a conference being held in Science City that he might be going to."

"Science City?" asks Clint. It sounds like the name of the Jetsons' hometown, or something.

"It's a science museum," says Natasha. "You should sleep first, Bruce. Look, we're here." She disentangles herself from Bruce, letting Clint support him. The safehouse looks like every other building on this street, until Natasha pops open the concealed keypad and starts typing in the passcode.

"You can use my phone after," says Clint, and then the door's open and they stumble in, Natasha closing the door after them.

"Yes," says Bruce, when Natasha flicks the lights on. "Yes, a bed, that is perfect."

That's about all there is, as Clint looks around. The safehouse is pretty spare, with a bed, a closet, and another room around the corner, probably a bathroom.

"Where are the rest of us going to sleep?" he asks, half joking and half concerned with the logistics. It's not a big bed, one pillow and a tiny duvet. Bruce takes his arm off of Clint's shoulder, and turns to look at him, considering.

"We'll make it work," says Natasha, firmly, and moves between them.

Bruce kisses Natasha, gently, and Clint clamps his jaw, but only to keep it from dropping. It's something to see, even with Bruce half-asleep and Natasha looking a little worn out also. Natasha holds Bruce by his hair and Bruce picks Natasha up off the ground, hands on her waist, and they're so gorgeous.

Clint must make a noise, because they break and turn toward him, their mouths a little swollen, their eyes very bright. Bruce kisses Clint first, the slow comfortable kiss that they practiced in that hotel, and then Natasha tugs him down to bite at his lips and they push into each other, hands on each other's asses.

Clint can do this - call all of Natasha by the same name, but keep a line between Bruce and the Hulk; kiss slow and sweet with Bruce and hard and fast with Natasha; work out the rules as they go along and remember that they're different people with different things to give and take.

"You look like you're fighting while making out," says Bruce, and Clint laughs and Natasha shrugs and wipes a bit of blood away from the corner of his mouth.

"Hey," says Clint. "Hey, I really like you guys."

"Good," says Natasha, and pushes Bruce into the bed. He goes down easy, falls asleep as Clint and Natasha get undressed and turn the lights off.

They do fit, just barely, tucked up into each other with Bruce's blanket over all of them, three sets of legs so tangled together that no one can fall out of bed without taking everyone else with them.

"I like you too," murmurs Natasha into Bruce's shoulder, her hand in Clint's hand.

"Good," whispers Clint, smiling into Bruce's other shoulder, squeezing Natasha's hand.

"Stop talking and be asleep," mutters Bruce, eyes clamped tight shut, and Clint takes his advice.

\---

He still likes them in the morning, when Natasha gets up to do stretches and Bruce borrows Clint's phone out of his quiver, and Clint is wrapped up in Bruce's blanket, taking advantage of having the bed to himself.

"I'm in Kolkata," says Bruce to the phone. "With Clint and Natasha."

"Say hello to Pepper for me," says Natasha, upside-down and easing into a splits.

"Stop talking and be asleep," moans Clint, and jams the pillow over his head.

"Headquarters called," says Natasha, pointedly ignoring his request. "We're to come to debriefing as soon as possible."

"Yes, with both of-" Bruce takes his phone away from his ear and stares at it before resuming his conversation, at a much lower volume. "Tony, that is an inappropriate question, and I will have to answer it some other time when I don't have guests in the room. But also yes."

"Hill will understand if it takes us a couple extra hours to get in," says Clint, still trying to valiantly cling to sleep. "Also, fuck debriefings. All I have done in the last year is go on missions, eat, debrief, sleep, go on more missions, and debrief again."

"And have sex," adds Bruce, and then he winces. Even Clint can hear the excited jabbering coming out of the phone, and Natasha smirks. "No, Tony," says Bruce. "I wasn't talking to you."

"Hill isn't debriefing us." Natasha flips herself back into an upright position, then rolls her shoulders. "Fury's doing it personally."

"Noooo," moans Clint, and tries to sink deeper into the bed.

"And Morse is still waiting to take us back," continues Natasha, mercilessly, and by nine am local time, a web of obligation and orders have come together to get Clint dressed, mobile, and at the airport.

He's not happy about it, but Natasha is there, and Bruce is coming along, and Morse is pretty nice, for a trainee, so Clint grits his teeth and goes with it.

\---

Clint has a simple policy in regard to debriefings: say everything that's relevant. The CO and his or her minions will tell you that you should disclose everything, because you're not in a position to judge what's relevant. This, in Clint's humble opinion, is ridiculous, and, what's worse, impossible. No one wants a report that includes the color of the sky that day, or how many cobblestones made up the street, even if you paid a lot of attention to the sky and took the time to count every cobblestone. (Clint is good at stakeouts, because he never gets bored. There's always something to occupy him.) At some point, an executive decision has to be made. And if this executive decision includes excising some of the less impressive or more self-indulgent things that Clint has done while on a mission, so be it.

Natasha is generally on board with this philosophy. Clint made an attempt to explain it to Bruce, but obviously it didn't sink in, because he volunteers some TMI. Not gross-TMI, just Fury-didn't-need-to-know-that-TMI. And now Fury is staring at the three of them like they are aliens from the planet Dingus.

"So," he says, drawing out the word. "Two of my finest agents failed to deliver an urgent warning about Doctor Doom putting out a hit on Doctor Banner, here," Fury points his pen at Bruce, "because you had to take a time out to talk about _feelings_?"

Clint slumps a bit in his chair. "To be fair, Sir," he tries, "there were a lot of feelings. To be discussed."

"I thought I was paying you not to have any feelings!" says Fury. Next to him, Agent Hill winces. She's probably caught it for letting Clint and Natasha go to Kolkata, and maybe even for not flagging Clint's behavior during earlier missions. Clint reminds himself to make it up to her later - it wasn't her fault that he was a mess.

"Director," says Natasha, calmly, "Agent Barton and I had been told that the warning was non-urgent. If we had known that Doombots were en route, we would have-"

"Acted the same damn way," snaps Fury. "Except you might have moved to the safehouse beforehand, instead of after. What the hell-"

"Do I even need to be here?" asks Bruce. For a moment Clint thinks that it's a rhetorical question, and Fury certainly does, because he ignores Bruce and keeps railing at Clint and Natasha. Clint's survived these kind of debriefings before; the trick is to wait Fury out until he's gotten all of the incredulity at your incompetence out of his system. It can take a while, but you get there in the end.

"Excuse me?" says Bruce, after a second, and that's when Clint realizes that he's serious. Fury's still ranting, so Bruce turns to Agent Hill. " _Do_ I need to be here?"

"You're part of this situation," says Hill, smoothly, but then she grins. "And I believe Director Fury was planning to give you some kind of 'if you hurt either of my agents, I will send you home in a bodybag' speech."

"Maria," says Fury, looking wounded. "You're stealing my thunder."

Bruce shakes his head and gets up from the table. "Call me back when you get to that part."

"Sit your ass back down." Fury's voice slips into conciliation. Too late, because Bruce is already out the door.

Bruce calls "I don't work for you!" over his shoulder, and the door shuts.

"Yeah, we'll see about that," mutters Fury, and then looks at Clint and Natasha. "And what are you two doing still here? Go get after him! Bring him back!"

Clint's up like a shot and running through the door, Natasha loping after him. They catch up to Bruce just down the hallway, and Clint's grin feels like it's stretching his face.

"You shouldn't walk out on the SHIELD Director," says Natasha, but she looks about as pleased as Clint, even if she doesn't show it with a smile.

"I just don't like listening to him yell at you because of me," says Bruce, which is exactly how Clint was feeling, and Natasha too, by the looks of it. "Is Fury mad?"

"Probably just wishes he'd been able to read you his speech." Clint slaps Bruce on the back, lets his hand linger when Bruce doesn't object. "I bet he wrote one all for you, with a list of maiming sites. Have you seen my room? You should see my room."

"And then my room," says Natasha.

"My bed is bigger," says Clint.

"Marginally," concedes Natasha. "But I have a full bath, and you have a tiny shower stall."

Clint thinks about that. "Point," he says. "But how did you get a bathtub installed in the Helicarrier?"

"That's classified," says Natasha, and Bruce starts snickering, quiet and behind his hand, and Clint's grin stretches impossibly wider, and Natasha slips her hand around Clint's waist, and they walk down the hall like that, together.

Okay, sometimes they have to break apart to let other agents by, but that's not especially relevant, so Clint plans to leave it out in the future.

\---

Fury lights a cigar. His doctor told him to quit, and Fury has, but this specific situation calls for a cigar so Fury is going to have one.

"Maria," he says, "how long do you figure before they get back here?"

Maria cocks her head, considering. "Two, three hours?"

"Right," says Fury, and breathes out smoke. "Let's just go back to the bridge. If we need them, we can cut the water supply to Agent Romanoff's room."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! And thanks to everyone who left kudos, and especially those who commented :)


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